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PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY OF THE 
AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS 



Mont-Saint- Michel and Chartres 



Chartres: The Tree of Jesse Window 
{Upper part) 



(\-s,-u<\ ts<^<\'- 



Mont 'Saint- Michel 
and Chartres 



BY 



HENRY ADAMS 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
RALPH ADAMS CRAM 



Illustrated 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1913 






o 



\ 



oyV" 



COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY HENRY ADAMS 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published November 1Q13 






Editor's Note 



FROM the moment when, through the courtesy of my friend Barrett 
Wendell, I came first to know Mr. Henry Adams's book, Mont- 
Saint-Michel and Chartres, I was profoundly convinced that this 
privately printed, jealously guarded volume should be withdrawn 
from its hiding-place amongst the bibliographical treasures of col- 
lectors and amateurs and given that wide publicity demanded alike 
by its intrinsic nature and the cause it could so admirably serve. 

To say that the book was a revelation is inadequately to express 
a fact; at once all the theology, philosophy, and mysticism, the poli- 
tics, sociology, and economics, the romance, literature, and art of that 
greatest epoch of Christian civilization became fused in the alembic 
of an unique insight and precipitated by the dynamic force of a per- 
sonal and distinguished style. A judgment that might well have been 
biased by personal inclination received the endorsement of many in 
two continents, more competent to pass judgment, better able to 
speak with authority; and so fortified, I had the honour of saying 
to Mr. Adams, in the autumn of 1912, that the American Institute 
of Architects asked the distinguished privilege of arranging for the 
publication of an edition for general sale, under its own imprimatur. 
The result is the volume now made available for public circulation. 

In justice to Mr. Adams, it should be said that such publication 
is, in his opinion, unnecessary and uncalled-for, a conclusion in 
which neither the American Institute of Architects, the publishers, 
nor the Editor concurs. Furthermore, the form in which the book is 
presented is no affair of the author, who, in giving reluctant consent 
to publication, expressly stipulated that he should have no part or 
parcel in carrying out so mad a venture of faith, — as he estimated 
the project of giving his book to the public. 



VI 



EDITOR'S NOTE 



In this, and for once, his judgment is at fault. Mont- Saint- Michel 
and Chartres is one of the most distinguished contributions to Htera- 
ture and one of the most valuable adjuncts to the study of mediaeval- 
ism America thus far has produced. The rediscovery of this great 
epoch of Christian civilization has had issue in many and valuable works 
on its religion, its philosophy, its economics, its politics, and its art, 
but in nearly every instance, whichever field has been traversed has 
been considered almost as an isolated phenomenon, with insufficient 
reference to the other aspects of an era that was singularly united and 
at one with itself. Hugh of Saint Victor and Saint Thomas Aquinas 
are fully comprehensible only in their relationship to Saint Anselm, 
Saint Bernard, and the development of Catholic dogma and life; feu- 
dalism, the crusades, the guilds and communes weave themselves 
into this same religious development and into the vicissitudes of cres- 
cent nationalities; Dante, the cathedral builders, the painters, sculp- 
tors, and music masters, all are closely knit into the warp and woof of 
philosophy, statecraft, economics, and religious devotion; — indeed, 
it may be said that the Middle Ages, more than any other recorded 
epoch of history, must be considered en bloc, as a period of consistent 
unity as highly emphasized as was its dynamic force. 

It is unnecessary to say that Mr. Adams deals with the art of the 
Middle Ages after this fashion: he is not of those who would deter- 
mine every element in art from its material antecedents. He realizes 
very fully that its essential element, the thing that differentiates it 
from the art that preceded and that which followed, is its spiritual 
impulse; the manifestation may have been, and probably was, more 
or less accidental, but that which makes Chartres Cathedral and its 
glass, the sculptures of Rheims, the Dies IrcB, Aucassin and Nicolette, 
the Song of Roland, the Arthurian Legends, great art and unique, is 
neither their technical mastery nor their fidelity to the enduring laws 
of all great art, — though these are singular in their perfection, — 
but rather the peculiar spiritual impulse which informed the time, and 



EDITOR'S NOTE vii 

by its intensity, its penetrating power, and its dynamic force wrought 
a rounded and complete civilization and manifested this through a 
thousand varied channels. 

Greater, perhaps, even than his grasp of the singular entirety of 
mediceval civilization, is Mr. Adams's power of merging himself in 
a long dead time, of thinking and feeling with the men and women 
thereof, and so breathing on the dead bones of antiquity that again 
they clothe themselves with flesh and vesture, call back their sev- 
ered souls, and live again, not only to the consciousness of the 
reader, but before his very eyes. And it is not a thin simulacrum he 
raises by some doubtful alchemy: it is no phantasm of the past that 
shines dimly before us in these magical pages; it is the very time itself 
in which we are merged. We forgather with the Abbot and his 
monks, and the crusaders and pilgrims in the Shrine of the Arch- 
angel: we pay our devoirs to the fair French Queens, — Blanche of 
Castile, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Mary of Champagne, — fighting their 
battles for them as liege servants: we dispute with Abelard, Thomas of 
Aquino, Duns the Scotsman: we take our parts in the Court of Love, 
or sing the sublime and sounding praises of God with the Canons of 
Saint Victor: our eyes opened at last, and after many days we kneel 
before Our Lady of Pity, asking her intercession for her lax but loyal 
devotees. Seven centuries dissolve and vanish away, being as they 
were not, and the thirteenth century lives less for us than we live in 
it and are a part of its gaiety and light-heartedness, its youthful 
ardour and abounding action, its childlike simplicity and frankness, 
its normal and healthy and all-embracing devotion. 

And it is well for us to have this experience. Apart from thTTde- 
sirable transformation it effects in preconceived and curiously erron- 
eous superstitions as to one of the greatest eras in all history, it is 
vastly heartening and exhilarating. If it gives new and not always 
flattering standards for the judgment of contemporary men and things, 
so does it establish new ideals, new goals for attainment. To live for 



viii EDITOR'S NOTE 

a day in a world that built Chartres Cathedral, even if it makes the 
living in a world that creates the "Black Country" of England or an 
Iron City of America less a thing of joy and gladness than before, 
equally opens up the far prospect of another thirteenth century in the 
times that are to come and urges to ardent action toward its attain- 
ment. • 

But apart from this, the deepest value of Mont- Saint- Michel and 
Chartres, its importance as a revelation of the eternal glory of medise- 
val art and the elements that brought it into being is not lightly to 
be expressed. To every artist, whatever his chosen form of expression, 
it must appear unique and invaluable, and to none more than the 
architect, who, familiar at last with its beauties, its power, and its 
teaching force, can only applaud the action of the American In- 
stitute of Architects in making Mr. Adams an Honorary Member, as 
one who has rendered distinguished services to the art, and voice his 
gratitude that it has brought the book within his reach and given it 
publicity before the world. 

Whitehall, 
Sudbury, Massachusetts, 
June, 1913. 



Contents 



Preface xiii 

I. Saint Michiel de la Mer del Peril . . . . i 
II. La Chanson de Roland 14 

III. The Merveille 32 

IV. Normandy and the Ile de France ..... 46 
V. Towers and Portals 62 

VI. The Virgin of Chartres 89 

VII. Roses and Apses . . , . 106 

VIII. The Twelfth-Century Glass 128 

IX. The Legendary Windows 149 

X. The Court of the Queen of Heaven . . . .179 

XL The Three Queens 198 

XII. Nicolette and Marion 230 

XIII. Les Miracles de Notre Dame . . . . . .251 

XIV. Abelard 285 

XV. The Mystics 320 

XVI. Saint Thomas Aquinas 347 

Index • • . 385 



Illustrations 



Chartres: The Tree of Jesse Window (upper part) (p. 127) 

Colored Frontispiece 

Mont-Saint-Michel 2 

Mont-Saint- Michel: The Hall of the Knights ... 24 

Mont-Saint-Michel: The Refectory 34 

CouTANCES Cathedral 46 

Caen: The "Abba ye aux Dames" 58 

Chartres Cathedral 62 

Chartres : Detail of West Portal 70 

Chartres: The North Porch . 78 

Chartres: The South Porch 86 

Chartres: The Nave no 

Chartres: The Prodigal Son Window 174 

Saint Thomas Aquinas 348 



Preface 



[December, 1904. 



Some old Elizabethan play or poem contains the lines: — 

. . . Who reads me, when I am ashes, 
Is my son in wishes 

The relationship, between reader and writer, of son and father, may 
have existed in Queen Elizabeth's time, but is much too close to be 
true for ours. The utmost that any writer could hope of his readers 
now is that they should consent to regard themselves as nephews, and 
even then he would expect only a more or less civil refusal from most 
of them. Indeed, if he had reached a certain age, he would have 
observed that nephews, as a social class, no longer read at all, and that 
there is only one familiar instance recorded of a nephew who read his 
uncle. The exception tends rather to support the rule, since it needed 
a Macaulay to produce, and two volumes to record it. Finally, the 
metre does not permit it. One may not say: "Who reads me, when I 
am ashes, is my nephew in wishes." 

The same objections do not apply to the word " niece." The change 
restores the verse, and, to a very great degree, the fact. Nieces have 
been known to read in early youth, and in some cases may have read 
their uncles. The relationship, too, is convenient and easy, capable of 
being anything or nothing, at the will of either party, like a Moham- 
medan or Polynesian or American marriage. No valid objection can 
be offered to this change in the verse. Niece let it be! 

The following pages, then, are written for nieces, or for those who 
are willing, for the time, to be nieces in wish. For convenience of 



xiv PREFACE 

travel in France, where hotels, in out-of-the-way places, are some- 
times wanting in space as well as luxury, the nieces shall count as one 
only. As many more may come as like, but one niece is enough for the 
uncle to talk to, and one niece is much more likely than two to listen. 
One niece is also more likely than two to carry a kodak and take inter- 
est in it, since she has nothing else, except her uncle, to interest her, and 
instances occur when she takes interest neither in the uncle nor in the 
journey. One cannot assume, even in a niece, too emotional a nature, 
but one may assume a kodak. 

The party, then, with such variations of detail as may suit its tastes, 
has sailed from New York, let us say, early in June for an entire sum- 
mer in France. One pleasant June morning it has landed at Cherbourg 
or Havre and takes the train across Normandy to Pontorson, where, 
with the evening light, the tourists drive along the chaussee, over the 
sands or through the tide, till they stop at Madame Poulard's famous 
hotel within the Gate of the Mount. 

The uncle talks : — 



Mont'Saint' Michel and Chartres 

CHAPTER I 

SAINT MICHIEL DE LA MER DEL PERIL 

THE Archangel loved heights. Standing on the summit of the 
tower that crowned his church, wings upspread, sword uplifted, 
the devil crawling beneath, and the cock, symbol of eternal vigilance, 
perched on his mailed foot. Saint Michael held a place of his own in 
heaven and on earth which seems, in the eleventh century, to leave 
hardly room for the Virgin of the Crypt at Chartres, still less for 
the Beau Christ of the thirteenth century at Amiens. The Archangel 
stands for Church and State, and both militant. He is the conqueror 
of Satan, the mightiest of all created spirits, the nearest to God. His 
place was where the danger was greatest ; therefore you find him here. 
For the same reason he was, while the pagan danger lasted, the patron 
saint of France. So the Normans, when they were converted to Chris- 
tianity, put themselves under his powerful protection. So he stood 
for centuries on his Mount in Peril of the Sea, watching across the 
tremor of the immense ocean, — immensi tremor oceani, — as Louis XI, 
inspired for once to poetry, inscribed on the collar of the Order of 
Saint Michael which he created. So soldiers, nobles, and monarchs 
went on pilgrimage to his shrine; so the common people followed, and 
still follow, like ourselves. 

The church stands high on the summit of this granite rock, and on 
its west front is the platform, to which the tourist ought first to climb. 
From the edge of this platform, the eye plunges down, two hundred 
and thirty-five feet, to the wide sands or the wider ocean, as the tides 
recede or advance, under an infinite sky, over a restless sea, which 
even we tourists can understand and feel without books or guides ; but 



2 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

when we turn from the western view, and look at the church door, 
thirty or forty yards from the parapet where we stand, one needs to be 
eight centuries old to know what this mass of encrusted architecture 
meant to its builders, and even then one must still learn to feel It. The 
man who wanders into the twelfth century is lost, unless he can grow 
prematurely young. 

One can do it, as one can play with children. Wordsworth, whose 
practical sense equalled his intuitive genius, carefully limited us to "a 
season of calm weather," which is certainly best; but granting a fair 
frame of mind, one can still "have sight of that immortal sea" which 
brought us hither from the twelfth century; one can even travel 
thither and see the children sporting on the shore. Our sense is par- 
tially atrophied from disuse, but it is still alive, at least in old people, 
who alone, as a class, have the time to be young. 

One needs only to be old enough in order to be as young as one 
will. From the top of this Abbey Church one looks across the bay to 
Avranches, and towards Coutances and the Cotentin, — the Constan- 
tinus pagus, — whose shore, facing us, recalls the coast of New Eng- 
land. The relation between the granite of one coast and that of the 
other may be fanciful, but the relation between the people who live on 
each is as hard and practical a fact as the granite itself. When one 
enters the church, one notes first the four great triumphal piers or 
columns, at the intersection of the nave and transepts, and on looking 
into M. Corroyer's architectural study which is the chief source of all 
one's acquaintance with the Mount, one learns that these piers were 
constructed in 1058. Four out of five American tourists will instantly 
^recall the only date of mediaeval history they ever knew, the date of 
the Norman Conquest. Eight years after these piers were built, in 
1066, Duke William of Normandy raised an army of forty thousand 
men in these parts, and in northern France, whom he took to England, 
where they mostly stayed. For a hundred and fifty years, until 1204, 
Normandy and England were united ; the Norman peasant went freely 



SAINT MICHIEL DE LA MER DEL PERIL 3 

to England with his lord, spiritual or temporal; the Norman woman, 
a very capable person, followed her husband or her parents; Normans 
held nearly all the English fiefs ; filled the English Church ; crowded the 
English Court; created the English law; and we know that French was 
still currently spoken in England as late as 1400, or thereabouts, "After 
the scole of Stratford atte bo we." The aristocratic Norman names 
still survive in part, and if we look up their origin here we shall gener- 
ally find them in villages so remote and insignificant that their place 
can hardly be found on any ordinary map ; but the common people had 
no surnames, and cannot be traced, although for every noble whose 
name or blood survived in England or in Normandy, we must reckon 
hundreds of peasants. Since the generation which followed William to 
England in 1066, we can reckon twenty-eight or thirty from father to 
son, and, if you care to figure up the sum, you will find that you had 
about two hundred and fifty million arithmetical ancestors living in 
the middle of the eleventh century. The whole population of England 
and northern France may then have numbered five million, but if it 
were fifty it would not much affect the certainty that, if you have 
any English blood at all, you have also Norman. If we could go back 
and live again in all our two hundred and fifty million arithmetical 
ancestors of the eleventh century, we should find ourselves doing many 
surprising things, but among the rest we should pretty certainly be 
ploughing most of the fields of the Cotentin and Calvados; going to 
mass in every parish church in Normandy; rendering military service 
to every lord, spiritual or temporal, in all this region; and helping to 
build the Abbey Church at Mont-Saint-Michel. From the roof of the 
Cathedral of Coutances over yonder, one may look away over the hills 
and woods, the farms and fields of Normandy, and so familiar, so 
homelike are they, one can almost take oath that in this, or the other, 
or in all, one knew life once and has never so fully known it since. 

Never so fully known it since ! For we of the eleventh century, hard- 
headed, close-fisted, grasping, shrewd, as we were, and as Normans 



4 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

are still said to be, stood more fully in the centre of the world's move- 
ment than our English descendants ever did. We were a part, and a 
great part, of the Church, of France, and of Europe. The Leos and 
Gregories of the tenth and eleventh centuries leaned on us in their 
great struggle for reform. Our Duke Richard-Sans-Peur, in 966, 
turned the old canons out of the Mount in order to bring here the 
highest influence of the time, the Benedictine monks of Monte Cas- 
sino. Richard II, grandfather of William the Conqueror, began this 
Abbey Church in 1020, and helped Abbot Hildebert to build it. When 
William the Conqueror in 1066 set out to conquer England, Pope 
Alexander II stood behind him and blessed his banner. From that 
moment our Norman Dukes cast the Kings of France into the shade. 
Our activity was not limited to northern Europe, or even confined by 
Anjou and Gascony. When we stop at Coutances, we will drive out to 
Hauteville to see where Tancred came from, whose sons Robert and 
Roger were conquering Naples and Sicily at the time when the Abbey 
Church was building on the Mount. Normans were everywhere in 
1066, and everywhere in the lead of their age. We were a serious race. 
If you want other proof of it, besides our record in war and in politics,, 
you have only to look at our art. Religious art is the measure of 
human depth and sincerity; any triviality, any weakness, cries aloud. 
If this church on the Mount is not proof enough of Norman character, 
we will stop at Coutances for a wider view. Then we will go to Caen 
and Bayeux. From there, it would almost be worth our while to leap 
at once to Palermo. It was in the year 1131 or thereabouts that Roger 
began the Cathedral at Cefalu and the Chapel Royal at Palermo; it was 
about the year 1 174 that his grandson William began the Cathedral of 
Monreale. No art — either Greek or Byzantine, Italian or Arab — has 
ever created two religious types so beautiful, so serious, so impress- 
ive, and yet so different, as Mont-Saint-Michel watching over its 
northern ocean, and Monreale, looking down over its forests of orange 
and lemon, on Palermo and the Sicilian seas. 



SAINT MICHIEL DE LA MER DEL PERIL 5 

Down nearly to the end of the twelfth century the Norman was 
fairly master of the world in architecture as in arms, although the 
thirteenth century belonged to France, and we must look for its 
glories on the Seine and Marne and Loire; but for the present we are in 
the eleventh century, — tenants of the Duke or of the Church or of 
small feudal lords who take their names from the neighbourhood, — 
Beaumont, Carteret, Greville, Percy, Pierpont, — who, at the Duke's 
bidding, will each call out his tenants, perhaps ten men-at-arms with 
their attendants, to fight in Brittany, or in the Vexin toward Paris, or 
on the great campaign for the conquest of England which is to come 
within ten years, — the greatest military effort that has been made 
in western Europe since Charlemagne and Roland were defeated 
at Roncesvalles three hundred years ago. For the moment, we are 
helping to quarry granite for the Abbey Church, and to haul it to the 
Mount, or load it on our boat. We never fail to make our annual 
pilgrimage to the Mount on the Archangel's Day, October 16. We 
expect to be called out for a new campaign which Duke William 
threatens against Brittany, and we hear stories that Harold the Saxon, 
the powerful Earl of Wessex in England, is a guest, or, as some say, 
a prisoner or a hostage, at the Duke's Court, and will go with us on 
the campaign. The year is 1058. 

All this time we have been standing on the parvis, looking out over 
the sea and sands which are as good eleventh-century landscape as 
they ever were; or turning at times towards the church door which is 
the pons seclorum, the bridge of ages, between us and our ancestors. 
Now that we have made an attempt, such as it is, to get our minds into 
a condition to cross the bridge without breaking down in the effort, we 
enter the church and stand face to face with eleventh-century archi- 
tecture; a ground-plan which dates from 1020; a central tower, or its 
piers, dating from 1058; and a church completed in 1135. France can 
offer few buildings of this importance equally old, with dates so exact. 
Perhaps the closest parallel to Mont-Saint- Michel is Saint-Benoit-sur- 



6 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

Loire, above Orleans, which seems to have been a shrine almost as 
popular as the Mount, at the same time. Chartres was also a famous 
shrine, but of the Virgin, and the west porch of Chartres, which is to 
be our peculiar pilgrimage, was a hundred years later than the ground- 
plan of Mont-Saint-Michel, although Chartres porch is the usual 
starting-point of northern French art. Queen Matilda's Abbaye-aux- 
Dames, now the Church of the Trinity, at Caen, dates from 1066. 
Saint Sernin at Toulouse, the porch of the Abbey Church at Moissac, 
Notre-Dame-du-Port at Clermont, the Abbey Church at Vezelay, are 
all said to be twelfth-century. Even San Marco at Venice was new in 
1020. 

Yet in 1020 Norman art was already too ambitious. Certainly nine 
hundred years leave their traces on granite as well as on other material, 
but the granite of Abbot Hildebert would have stood securely enough, 
if the Abbot had not asked too much from it. Perhaps he asked too 
much from the Archangel, for the thought of the Archangel's superior- 
ity was clearly the inspiration of his plan. The apex of the granite rock 
rose like a sugar-loaf two hundred and forty feet (73.6 metres) above 
mean sea-level. Instead of cutting the summit away to give his church 
a secure rock foundation, which would have sacrificed about thirty 
feet of height, the Abbot took the apex of the rock for his level, and on 
all sides built out foundations of masonry to support the walls of his 
church. The apex of the rock is the floor of the croisee, the intersection 
of nave and transept. On this solid foundation the Abbot rested the 
chief weight of the church, which was the central tower, supported by 
the four great piers which still stand ; but from the croisee in the centre 
westward to the parapet of the platform, the Abbot filled the whole 
space with masonry, and his successors built out still farther, until 
some two hundred feet of stonework ends now in a perpendicular wall 
of eighty feet or more. In this space are several ranges of chambers, 
but the structure might perhaps have proved strong enough to support 
the light Romanesque front which was usual in the eleventh century. 



SAINT MICHIEL DE LA MER DEL PERIL 7 

had not fashions in architecture changed in the great epoch of build- 
ing, a hundred and fifty years later, when Abbot Robert de Torigny 
thought proper to reconstruct the west front, and build out two towers 
on its flanks. The towers were no doubt beautiful, if one may judge 
from the towers of Bayeux and Coutances, but their weight broke 
down the vaulting beneath, and one of them fell in 1300. In 161 8 the 
whole fagade began to give way, and in 1776 not only the fagade but 
also three of the seven spans of the nave were pulled down. Of Abbot 
Hildebert's nave, only four arches remain. 

Still, the overmastering strength of the eleventh century is stamped 
on a great scale here, not only in the four spans of the nave, and in the 
transepts, but chiefly in the triumphal columns of the croisee. No one 
is likely to forget what Norman architecture was, who takes the 
trouble to pass once through this fragment of its earliest bloom. The 
dimensions are not great, though greater than safe construction war- 
ranted. Abbot Hildebert's whole church did not exceed two hundred 
and thirty feet in length in the interior, and the span of the triumphal 
arch was only about twenty-three feet, if the books can be trusted. 
The nave of the Abbaye-aux-Dames appears to have about the same 
width, and probably neither of them was meant to be vaulted. The 
roof was of timber, and about sixty-three feet high at its apex. Com- 
pared with the great churches of the thirteenth century, this build- 
ing is modest, but its size is not what matters to us. Its style is the 
starting-point of all our future travels. Here is your first eleventh- 
century church! How does it affect you? 

Serious and simple to excess! is it not? Young people rarely enjoy 
it. They prefer the Gothic, even as you see it here, looking at us from 
the choir, through the great Norman arch. No doubt they are right, 
since they are young: but men and women who have lived long and are 
tired, — who want rest, — who have done with aspirations and ambi- 
tion, — whose life has been a broken arch, — feel this repose and self- 
restraint as they feel nothing else. The quiet strength of these curved 



8 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

lines, the solid support of these heavy columns, the moderate propor- 
tions, even the modified lights, the absence of display, of effort, of self- 
consciousness, satisfy them as no other art does. They come back to 
it to rest, after a long circle of pilgrimage, — the cradle of rest from 
which their ancestors started. Even here they find the repose none too 
deep. 

Indeed, when you look longer at it, you begin to doubt whether 
there is any repose in it at all, — whether it is not the most unrepose- 
ful thought ever put into architectural form. Perched on the extreme 
point of this abrupt rock, the Church Militant with its aspirant Arch- 
angel stands high above the world, and seems to threaten heaven itself. 
The idea is the stronger and more restless because the Church of Saint 
Michael is surrounded and protected by the world and the society over 
which it rises, as Duke William rested on his barons and their men. 
Neither the Saint nor the Duke was troubled by doubts about his 
mission. Church and State, Soul and Body, God and Man, are all one 
at Mont-Saint-Michel, and the business of all is to fight, each in his 
own way, or to stand guard for each other. Neither Church nor State 
is intellectual, or learned, or even strict in dogma. Here we do not feel 
the Trinity at all; the Virgin but Httle; Christ hardly more; we feel 
only the Archangel and the Unity of God. We have little logic here, 
and simple faith, but we have energy. We cannot do many things 
which are done in the centre of civilization, at Byzantium, but we can 
fight, and we can build a church. No doubt we think first of the 
church, and next of our temporal lord ; only in the last instance do we 
think of our private affairs, and our private affairs sometimes suffer 
for it; but we reckon the affairs of Church and State to be ours, too, 
and we carry this idea very far. Our church on the Mount^js ambi- 
tious, restless, striving for effect; our conquest of England, with which 
the Duke is infatuated, is more ambitious still; but all this is a trifle 
to the outburst which is coming in the next generation; and Saint 
Michael on his Mount expresses it all. 



SAINT MICHIEL DE LA MER DEL PERIL 9 

Taking architecture as an expression of energy, we can some day 
compare Mont-Saint- Michel with Beauvais, and draw from the com- 
parison whatever moral suits our frame of mind ; but you should first 
note that here, in the eleventh century, the Church, however simple- 
minded or unschooled, was not cheap. Its self-respect is worth notic- 
ing, because it was short-lived in its art. Mont-Saint-Michel, through- 
out, even up to the delicate and intricate stonework of its cloisters, is 
built of granite. The crypts and substructures are as well constructed 
as the surfaces most exposed to view. When we get to Chartres, which 
is largely a twelfth-century work, you will see that the cathedral 
there, too, is superbly built, of the hardest and heaviest stone within 
reach, which has nowhere settled or given way; while, beneath, you 
will find a crypt that rivals the church above. The thirteenth century 
did not build so. The great cathedrals after 1200 show economy, 
and sometimes worse. The world grew cheap, as worlds must. 

You may like it all the better for being less serious, less heroic, less 
militant, and more what the French call bourgeois, just as you may like 
the style of Louis XV better than that of Louis XIV, — Madame du 
Barry better than Madame de Montespan, — for taste is free, and all 
styles are good which amuse; but since we are now beginning with the 
earliest, in order to step down gracefully to the stage, whatever it is, 
where you prefer to stop, we must try to understand a little of the 
kind of energy which Norman art expressed, or would have expressed 
if it had thought in our modes. The only word which describes the 
Norman style is the French word naif. Littre says that naif comes 
from natif, as vulgar comes from vulgus, as though native traits must be 
simple, and commonness must be vulgar. Both these derivative mean- 
ings were^trange to the eleventh century. Naivete was simply natural 
and vulgarity was merely coarse. Norman naivete was not different 
in kind from the naivete of Burgundy or Gascony or Lombardy, but 
it was slightly different in expression, as you will see when you travel 
south. Here at Mont-Saint-Michel we have only a mutilated trunk of 



10 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

an eleventh-century church to judge by. We have not even a fagade, 
and shall have to stop at some Norman village — at Thaon or Ouistre- 
ham — to find a west front which might suit the Abbey here, but 
wherever we find it we shall find something a little more serious, more 
military, and more practical than you will meet in other Romanesque 
work, farther south. So, too, the central tower or lantern — the most 
striking feature of Norman churches — has fallen here at Mont-Saint- 
Michel, and we shall have to replace it from Cerisy-la-Foret, and 
Lessay, and Falaise. We shall find much to say about the value of the 
lantern on a Norman church, and the singular power it expresses. We 
shall have still more to say of the towers which flank the west front of 
Norman churches, but these are mostly twelfth-century, and will lead 
us far beyond Coutances and Bayeux, ivovafleche to fleche, till we come 
to the fleche of all fleches, at Chartres. 

We shall have a whole chapter of study, too, over the eleventh- 
century apse, but here at Mont-Saint-Michel, Abbot Hildebert's choir 
went the way of his nave and tower. He built out even more boldly to 
the east than to the west, and although the choir stood for some four 
hundred years, which is a suflicient life for most architecture, the 
foundations gave way at last, and it fell in 1421, in the midst of the 
English wars, and remained a ruin until 1450. Then it was rebuilt, 
a monument of the last days of the Gothic, so that now, standing at 
the western door, you can look down the church, and see the two 
limits of mediaeval architecture married together, — the earliest Nor- 
man and the latest French. Through the Romanesque arches of 1058, 
you look into the exuberant choir of latest Gothic, finished in 1521. 
Although the two structures are some five hundred years apart, they 
live pleasantly together. The Gothic died gracefully in France. The 
choir is charming, — far more charming than the nave, as the beauti- 
ful woman is more charming than the elderly man. One need not quar- 
rel about styles of beauty, as long as the man and woman are evidently 
satisfied and love and admire each other still, with all the solidity of 



SAINT MICHIEL DE LA MER DEL PERIL ii 

faith to hold them up; but, at least, one cannot help seeing, as one 
looks from the older to the younger style, that whatever the woman's 
sixteenth-century charm may be, it is not the man's eleventh-century 
trait of naivete ; — far from it ! The simple, serious, silent dignity and 
energy of the eleventh century have gone. Something more compli- 
cated stands in their place; graceful, self-conscious, rhetorical, and 
beautiful as perfect rhetoric, with its clearness, light, and line, and the 
wealth of tracery that verges on the florid. 

The crypt of the same period, beneath, is almost finer still, and even 
in seriousness stands up boldly by the side of the Romanesque ; but we 
have no time to run off into the sixteenth century: we have still to 
learn the alphabet of art in France. One must live deep into the 
eleventh century in order to understand the twelfth, and even after 
passing years in the twelfth, we shall find the thirteenth in many ways 
a world of its own, with a beauty not always inherited, and sometimes 
not bequeathed. At the Mount we can go no farther into the eleventh 
as far as concerns architecture. We shall have to follow the Roman- 
esque to Caen and so up the Seine to the He de France, and across to 
the Loire and the Rhone, far to the South where its home lay. All the 
other eleventh-century work has been destroyed here or built over, 
except at one point, on the level of the splendid crypt we just turned 
from, called the Gros Piliers, beneath the choir. 

There, according to M. Corroyer, in a corner between great con- 
structions of the twelfth century and the vast Merveille of the thir- 
teenth, the old refectory of the eleventh was left as a passage from one 
group of buildings to the other. Below it is the kitchen of Hildebert. 
Above, on the level of the church, was the dormitory. These eleventh- 
century abbatial buildings faced north and west, and are close to the 
present parvis, opposite the last arch of the nave. The lower levels of 
Hildebert's plan served as supports or buttresses to the church above, 
and must therefore be older than the nave; probably older than the 
triumphal piers of 1058. 



12 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

Hildebert planned them in 1020, and died after carrying his plans 
out so far that they could be completed by Abbot Ralph de Beau- 
mont, who was especially selected by Duke William in 1048, "more for 
his high birth than for his merits." Ralph de Beaumont died in 1060, 
and was succeeded by Abbot Ranulph, an especial favourite of Duchess 
Matilda, and held in high esteem by Duke William. The list of names 
shows how much social importance was attributed to the place. The 
Abbot's duties included that of entertainment on a great scale. The 
Mount was one of the most famous shrines of northern Europe. We 
are free to take for granted that all the great people of Normandy slept 
at the Mount and, supposing M. Corroyer to be right, that they dined 
in this room, between 1050, when the building must have been in use, 
down to 1 122 when the new abbatial quarters were built. 

How far the monastic rules restricted social habits is a matter for 
antiquaries to settle if they can, and how far those rules were observed 
in the case of great secular princes; but the eleventh century was not 
very strict, and the rule of the Benedictines was always mild, until the 
Cistercians and Saint Bernard stiffened its discipline toward 1120. 
Even then the Church showed strong leanings toward secular poetry 
and popular tastes. The drama belonged to it almost exclusively, and 
the Mysteries and Miracle plays which were acted under its patronage 
often contained nothing of religion except the miracle. The greatest 
poem of the eleventh century was the "Chanson de Roland," and of 
that the Church took a sort of possession. At Chartres we shall find 
Charlemagne and Roland dear to the Virgin, and at about the same 
time, as far away as at Assisi in the Perugian country. Saint Francis 
" himself — the nearest approach the Western world ever made to an 
Oriental incarnation of the divine essence — loved the French ro- 
mans, and typified himself in the " Chanson de Roland." With Mont- 
Saint-Michel, the "Chanson de Roland" is almost one. The "Chan- 
son" is in poetry what the Mount is in architecture. Without the 
"Chanson," one cannot approach the feeling which the eleventh 



SAINT MICHIEL DE LA MER DEL PERIL 13 

century built into the Archangel's church. Probably there was never 
a day, certainly never a week, during several centuries, when portions 
of the "Chanson" were not sung, or recited, at the Mount, and if 
there was one room where it was most at home, this one, supposing it 
to be the old refectory, claims to be the place. 



CHAPTER II 



LA CHANSON DE ROLAND 



Molz pelerins qui vunt al Munt 
Enquierent molt e grant dreit unt 
Comment I'igliese fut fundee 
Premierement et estoree. 
Cil qui lor dient de I'estoire 
Que cil demandant en memoire 
Ne I'unt pas bien ainz vunt faillant 
En plusors leus e mespernant. 
Por faire la apertement 
Entendre a eels qui escient 
N'unt de clerzie I'a tornee 
De latin tote et ordenee 
Pars veirs romieus novelement 
Molt en segrei por son convent 
Uns jovencels moine est del Munt 
Deus en son reigne part li dunt. 
Guillaume a non de Saint Paier 
Cen vei escrit en cest quaier. 
El tens Robeirt de Torignie 
Fut cil romanz fait e trove. 



Most pilgrims who come to the Mount 

Enquire much and are quite right, 

How the church was founded 

At first, and established. 

Those who tell them the story 

That they ask, in memory 

Have it not well, but fall in error 

In many places, and misapprehension. 

In order to make it clearly 

Intelligible to those who have 

No knowledge of letters, it has been turned 

From the Latin, and wholly rendered 

In Romanesque verses, newly. 

Much in secret, for his convent, 

By a youth; a monk he is of the Mount. 

God in his kingdom grant him part! 

William is his name, of Saint Pair 

As is seen written in this book. 

In the time of Robert of Torigny 

Was this roman made and invented. 



THESE verses begin the "Roman du Mont-Saint-Michel," and 
if the spelHng is corrected, they still read almost as easily as 
Voltaire; more easily than Verlaine; and much like a nursery rhyme; 
but as tourists cannot stop to clear their path, or smooth away the 
pebbles, they must be lifted over the rough spots, even when roughness 
is beauty. Translation is an evil, chiefly because every one who cares 
for medieval architecture cares for mediaeval French, and ought to 
care still more for mediaeval English. The language of this " Roman " 
was the literary language of England. William of Saint-Pair was a 
subject of Henry II, King of England and Normandy; his verses, like 
those of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, are monuments of English literature. 
To this day their ballad measure is better suited to English than to 



LA CHANSON DE ROLAND 15 

French; even the words and idioms are more English than French. 
Any one who attacks them boldly will find that the 'Vers romieus" 
run along like a ballad, singing their own meaning, and troubling 
themselves very little whether the meaning is exact or not. One's 
translation is sure to be full of gross blunders, but the supreme blunder 
is that of translating at all when one is trying to catch not a fact 
but a feeling. If translate one must, we had best begin by trying 
to be literal, under protest that it matters not a straw whether we 
succeed. Twelfth-century art was not precise; still less "precieuse," 
like Moliere's famous seventeenth-century prudes. 

The verses of the young monk, William, who came from the little 
Norman village of Saint-Pair, near Granville, within sight of the 
Mount, were verses not meant to be brilliant. Simple human beings 
like rhyme better than prose, though both may say the same thing, 
as they like a curved line better than a straight one, or a blue better 
than a grey ; but, apart from the sensual appetite, they chose rhyme in 
creating their literature for the practical reason that they remembered 
it better than prose. Men had to carry their libraries in their heads. 

These lines of William, beginning his story, are valuable because 
for once they give a name and a date. Abbot Robert of Torigny ruled 
at the Mount from 11 54 to 11 86. We have got to travel again and 
again between Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres during these years, 
but for the moment we must hurry to get back to William the Con- 
queror and the " Chanson de Roland." William of Saint-Pair comes in 
here, out of place, only on account of a pretty description he gave of the 
annual pilgrimage to the Mount, which is commonly taken to be more 
or less like what he saw every year on the Archangel's Day, and what 
had existed ever since the Normans became Christian in 912: — 



Li jorz iert clers e sanz grant vent. The day was clear, without much wind. 

Les meschines e les vallez The maidens and the varlets 

Chascuns d'els dist verz ou sonnez. Each of them said verse or song; 

Neis li viellart revunt chantant Even the old people go singing; 



16 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



De leece funt tuit semblant. 
Qui plus ne seit si chante outree 
E Dex aie u Asusee. 
Cil jugleor la u il vunt 
Tuit lor vieles traites unt 
Laiz et sonnez vunt vielant. 

Li tens est beals la joie est grant. 
Cil palefrei e cil destrier 
E cil roncin e cil sommier 
Qui errouent par le chemin 
Que menouent cil pelerin 
De totes parz henissant vunt 
Por la grant joie que il unt. 
Neis par les bois chantouent tuit 
Li oiselet grant et petit. 

Li buef les vaches vunt muant 
Par les forez e repaissant. 
Cors e boisines e fresteals 
E fleutes e chalemeals 
Sonnoent si que les montaignes 
En retintoent et les pleignes. 
Que esteit dont les plaiseiz 
E des forez e des larriz. 
En eels par a tel sonneiz 
Com si ce fust cers acoUiz. 

Entor le mont el bois foUu 
Cil travetier unt tres tendu 
Rues unt fait par les chemins. 
Plentei i out de divers vins 
Pain e pastez fruit e poissons 
Oisels obleies veneisons 
De totes parz aveit a vendre 
Assez en out qui ad que tendre. 



All have a look of joy. 

Who knows no more sings Hurrah, 

Or God help, or Up and On I 

The minstrels there where they go 

Have all brought their viols; 

Lays and songs playing as they go. 

The weather is fine; the joy is great; 

The palfreys and the chargers, 

And the hackneys and the packhorses 

Which wander along the road 

That the pilgrims follow, 

On all sides neighing go. 

For the great joy they feel. 

Even in the woods sing all 

The little birds, big and small. 

The oxen and the cows go lowing 

Through the forests as they feed. 

Horns and trumpets and shepherd's pipes 

And flutes and pipes of reed 

Sound so that the mountains 

Echo to them, and the plains. 

How was it then with the glades 

And with the forests and the pastures? 

In these there was such sound 

As though it were a stag at bay. 

About the Mount, in the leafy wood, 
The workmen have tents set up; 
Streets have made along the roads. 
Plenty there was of divers wines. 
Bread and pasties, fruit and fish, 
Birds, cakes, venison. 
Everywhere there was for sale. 
Enough he had who has the means to pay. 



If you are not satisfied with this translation, any scholar of French 
will easily help to make a better, for we are not studying grammar or 
archaeology, and would rather be inaccurate in such matters than not, 
if, at that price, a freer feeling of the art could be caught. Better still, 
you can turn to Chaucer, who wrote his Canterbury Pilgrimage two 
hundred years afterwards : — 



LA CHANSON DE ROLAND 17 

Whanne that April with his shoures sote 

The droughte of March hath perced to the rote . . . 

Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages 

And palmeres for to seken strange strondes . . . 

And especially, from every shires ende 

Of Englelonde, to Canterbury they wende 

The holy blisful martyr for to seke, 

That hem hath holpen whan that they were seke. 

The passion for pilgrimages was universal among our ancestors as far 
back as we can trace them. For at least a thousand years it was their 
chief delight, and is not yet extinct. To feel the art of Mont-Saint- 
Michel and Chartres we have got to become pilgrims again: but, just 
now, the point of most interest is not the pilgrim so much as the min- 
strel who sang to amuse him, — the jugleor or jongleur, — who was at 
home in every abbey, castle or cottage, as well as at every shrine. The 
jugleor became a jongleur and degenerated into the street-juggler; the 
minstrel, or menestrier, became very early a word of abuse, equivalent 
to blackguard ; and from the beginning the profession seems to have 
been socially decried, like that of a music-hall singer or dancer in 
later times; but in the eleventh century, or perhaps earlier still, the 
jongleur seems to have been a poet, and to have composed the songs he 
sang. The immense mass of poetry known as the ''Chansons de Geste " 
seems to have been composed as well as sung by the unnamed Homers 
of France, and of all spots in the many provinces where the French 
language in its many dialects prevailed, Mont-Saint-Michel should 
have been the favourite with the jongleur, not only because the swarms 
of pilgrims assured him food and an occasional small piece of silver, but 
also because Saint Michael was the saint militant of all the warriors 
whose exploits in war were the subject of the "Chansons de Geste." 
William of Saint- Pair was a priest-poet; he was not a minstrel, and his 
"Roman" was not a chanson; it was made to read, not to recite; but 
the "Chanson de Roland" was a different affair. 

So it was, too, with William's contemporaries and rivals or prede- 
cessors, the monumental poets of Norman-English literature. Wace, 



i8 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

whose rhymed history of the Norman dukes, which he called the 
"Roman de Rou," or "RoUo," is an English classic of the first rank, 
was a canon of Bayeux when William of Saint-Pair was writing at 
Mont-Saint-Michel. His rival Benoist, who wrote another famous 
chronicle on the same subject, was also a historian, and not a singer. 
In that day literature meant verse; elegance in French prose did not 
yet exist ; but the elegancies of poetry in the twelfth century were as 
different, in kind, from the grand style of the eleventh, as Virgil was 
different from Homer. 

William of Saint-Pair introduces us to the pilgrimage and to the 
jongleur, as they had existed at least two hundred years before his time, 
and, were to exist two hundred years after him. Of all our two hundred 
and fifty million arithmetical ancestors who were going on pilgrimages 
in the middle of the eleventh century, the two who would probably 
most interest every one, after eight hundred years have passed, would 
be William the Norman and Harold the Saxon. Through William of 
Saint-Pair and Wace and Benoist, and the most charming literary 
monument of all, the Bayeux tapestry of Queen Matilda, we can build 
up the story of such a pilgrimage which shall be as historically exact as 
the battle of Hastings, and as artistically true as the Abbey Church. 

According to Wace's "Roman de Rou," when Harold's father, Earl 
Godwin, died, April 15, 1053, Harold wished to obtain the release of 
certain hostages, a brother and a cousin, whom Godwin had given to 
Edward the Confessor as security for his good behaviour, and whom 
Edward had sent to Duke William for safe-keeping. Wace took the 
story from other and older sources, and its accuracy is much disputed, 
but the fact that Harold went to Normandy seems to be certain, and 
you will see at Bayeux the picture of Harold asking permission of 
King Edward to make the journey, and departing on horseback, with 
his hawk and hounds and followers, to take ship at Bosham, near 
Chichester and Portsmouth. The date alone is doubtful. Common 
sense seems to suggest that the earliest possible date could not be too 



LA CHANSON DE ROLAND 19 

early to explain the rash youth of the aspirant to a throne who put 
himself in the power of a rival in the eleventh century. When that 
rival chanced to be William the Bastard, not even boyhood could ex- 
cuse the folly; but Mr. Freeman, the chief authority on this delicate 
subject, inclined to think that Harold was forty years old when he 
committed his blunder, and that the year was about 1064. Between 
1054 and 1064 the historian is free to choose what year he likes, and 
the tourist is still freer. To save trouble for the memory, the year 1058 
will serve, since this is the date of the triumphal arches of the Abbey 
Church on the Mount. Harold, in sailing from the neighbourhood of 
Portsmouth, must have been bound for Caen or Rouen, but the usual 
west winds drove him eastward till he was thrown ashore on the coast 
of Ponthieu, between Abbeville and Boulogne, where he fell into the 
hands of the Count of Ponthieu, from whom he was rescued or ran- 
somed by Duke William of Normandy and taken to Rouen. Accord- 
ing to Wace and the " Roman de Rou " : — 

Guillaume tint Heraut maint jour William kept Harold many a day, 

Si com il dut a grant enor. As was his due in great honour. 

A maint riche torneiement To many a rich tournament 

Le fist aller mult noblement. Made him go very nobly. 

Chevals e armes li dona Horses and arms gave him 

Et en Bretaigne le mena And into Brittany led him 

Ne sai de veir treiz faiz ou quatre I know not truly whether three or four times 

Quant as Bretons se dut combattre. When he had to make war on the Bretons. 

Perhaps the allusion to rich tournaments belongs to the time of 
Wace rather than to that of Harold a century earlier, before the first 
crusade, but certainly Harold did go with William on at least one 
raid into Brittany, and the charming tapestry of Bayeux, which tra- 
dition calls by the name of Queen Matilda, shows William's men-at- 
arms crossing the sands beneath Mont-Saint- Michel, with the Latin 
legend: — "Et venerunt ad Montem Michaelis. Hie Harold dux 
trahebat eos de arena. Venerunt ad flumen Cononis." They came to 
Mont-Saint-Michel, and Harold dragged them out of the quicksands. 



20 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



They came to the river Couesnon. Harold must have got great fame 
by saving Hfe on the sands, to be remembered and recorded by the 
Normans themselves after they had killed him; but this is the affair 
of historians. Tourists note only that Harold and William came to the 
Mount : — " Venerunt ad Montem." They would never have dared to 
pass it, on such an errand, without stopping to ask the help of Saint 
Michael. 

If William and Harold came to the Mount, they certainly dined or 
supped in the old refectory, which is where we have lain in wait for 
them. Where Duke William was, his jongleur — jugleor — was not 
far, and Wace knew, as every one in Normandy seemed to know, who 
this favourite was, — his name, his character, and his song. To him 
Wace owed one of the most famous passages in his story of the assault 
at Hastings, where Duke William and his battle began their advance 
against the English lines : — 



Taillefer qui mult bien chantout 
Sor un cheval qui tost alout 
Devant le due alout chantant 
De Karlemaigne e de Rollant 
E d'Oliver e des vassals 
Qui morurent en Rencevals. 
Quant il orent chevalchie tant 
Qu'as Engleis vindrent apreismant: 
"Sire," dist Taillefer, "merci! 
Id vos ai longuement servi. 
Tot mon servise me devez. 
Hui se vos plaist le me rendez. 
Por tot guerredon vos requier 
E si vos voil forment preier • 
Otreiez mei que io ni faille 
Le premier colp de la bataille." 
Li dus respondi: " Io I'otrei." 



Taillefer who was famed for song, 
Mounted on a charger strong. 
Rode on before the Duke, and sang 
Of Roland and of Charlemagne, 
Oliver and the vassals all 
Who fell in fight at Roncesvals. 
When they had ridden till they saw 
The English battle close before: 
" Sire," said Taillefer, " a grace! 
I have served you long and well; 
All reward you owe me still; 
To-day repay me if you please. 
For all guerdon I require. 
And ask of you in formal prayer, 
Grant to me as mine of right 
The first blow struck in the fight." 
The Duke answered: "l grant." 



Of course, critics doubt the story, as they very properly doubt every- 
thing. They maintain that the " Chanson de Roland" was not as old 
as the battle of Hastings, and certainly Wace gave no sufficient proof 
of it. Poetry was not usually written to prove facts. Wace wrote a 



LA CHANSON DE ROLAND 21 

hundred years after the battle of Hastings. One is not morally required 
to be pedantic to the point of knowing more than Wace knew, but the 
feeling of scepticism, before so serious a monument as Mont-Saint- 
Michel, is annoying. The '"Chanson de Roland" ought not to be 
trifled with, at least by tourists in search of art. One is shocked at the 
possibility of being deceived about the starting-point of American 
genealogy. Taillefer and the song rest on the same evidence that 
Duke William and Harold and the battle itself rest upon, and to 
doubt the " Chanson" is to call the very roll of Battle Abbey in ques- 
tion. The whole fabric of society totters; the British peerage turns 
pale. 

Wace did not invent all his facts. William of Malmesbury is sup- 
posed to have written his prose chronicle about 1120 when many of 
the men who fought at Hastings must have been alive, and William 
expressly said: "Tunc cantilena Rollandi inchoata ut martium viri 
exemplum pugnaturos accenderet, inclamatoque dei auxilio, praelium 
consertum." Starting the "Chanson de Roland" to inflame the 
fighting temper of the men, battle was joined. This seems enough 
proof to satisfy any sceptic, yet critics still suggest that the "cantilena 
Rollandi ' ' must have been a Norman ' ' Chanson de Rou , " or " Rollo, ' ' or 
at best an earlier version of the "Chanson de Roland"; but no Nor- 
man chanson would have inflamed the martial spirit of William's army, 
which was largely French; and as for the age of the version, it is quite 
immaterial for Mont-Saint-Michel; the actual version is old enough. 

Taillefer himself is more vital to the interest of the dinner in the 
refectory, and his name was not mentioned by William of Malmes- 
bury. If the song was started by the Duke's order, it was certainly 
started by the Duke's jongleur, and the name of this jongleur happens 
to be known on still better authority than that of William of Malmes- 
bury. Guy of Amiens went to England in 1068 as almoner of Queen 
Matilda, and there wrote a Latin poem on the battle of Hastings 
which must have been complete within ten years after the battle was 



22 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

fought, for Guy died in 1076. Taillefer, he said, led the Duke's bat- 
tle: — 

Incisor-ferri mimus cognomine dictus. 

"Taillefer, a jongleur known by that name." A mime was a singer, 
but Taillefer was also an actor : — 

Histrio cor audax nimium quem nobilitabat. 

"A jongleur whom a very brave heart ennobled." The jongleur was 
not noble by birth, but was ennobled by his bravery. 

Hortatur Gallos verbis et territat Anglos 
Alte projiciens ludit et ense suo. 

Like a drum-major with his staff, he threw his sword high in the air 
and caught it, while he chanted his song to the French, and terrified 
the English. The rhymed chronicle of Geoff roy Gaimer who wrote 
about 1 150, and that of Benoist who was Wace's rival, added the 
story that Taillefer died in the melee. 

The most unlikely part of the tale was, after all, not the singing of 
the "Chanson," but the prayer of Taillefer to the Duke: — 

"Otreiez mei que io ni faille 
Le premier colp de la bataille." 

Legally translated, Taillefer asked to be ennobled, and offered to pay 
for it with his life. The request of a jongleur to lead the Duke's battle 
seems incredible. In early French "bataille" meant battalion, — the 
column of attack. The Duke's grant: "Io I'otrei!" seems still more 
fanciful. Yet Guy of Amiens distinctly confirmed the story: "His- 
trio cor audax nimium quem nobilitabat" ; a stage-player — a juggler 
— the Duke's singer — whose bravery ennobled him. The Duke 
granted him — octroya — his patent of nobility on the field. 

All this preamble leads only to unite the " Chanson " with the archi- 
tecture of the Mount, by means of Duke William and his Breton cam- 
paign of 1058. The poem and the church are akin; they go together, 
and explain each other. Their common trait is their military character, 



LA CHANSON DE ROLAND 23 

peculiar to the eleventh century. The round arch is masculine. The 
"Chanson" is so masculine that, in all its four thousand lines, the 
only Christian woman so much as mentioned was Alda, the sister of 
Oliver and the betrothed of Roland, to whom one stanza, exceedingly 
like a later insertion, was given, toward the end. Never after the first 
crusade did any great poem rise to such heroism as to sustain itself 
without a heroine. Even Dante attempted no such feat. 

Duke William's party, then, is to be considered as assembled at 
supper in the old refectory, in the year 1058, while the triumphal 
piers of the church above are rising. The Abbot, Ralph of Beaumont, 
is host; Duke William sits with him on a dais; Harold is by his side 
"a grant enor"; the Duke's brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, with the 
other chief vassals, are present; and the Duke's jongleur Taillefer is at 
his elbow. The room is crowded with soldiers and monks, but all are 
equally anxious to hear Taillefer sing. As soon as dinner is over, at 
a nod from the Duke, Taillefer begins: — 

Carles li reis nostre emperere magnes Charles the king, our emperor, the great, 

Set anz tuz pleins ad estet en Espaigne Seven years complete has been in Spain, 

Cunquist la tere tresque en la mer altaigne Conquered the land as far as the high seas, 

Ni ad castel ki devant lui remaigne Nor is there castle that holds against him, 

Murs ne citez ni est remes a fraindre. Nor wall or city left to capture. 

The "Chanson" opened with these lines, which had such a direct 
and personal bearing on every one who heard them as to sound like 
prophecy. Within ten years William was to stand in England where 
Charlemagne stood in Spain. His mind was full of it, and of the 
means to attain it ; and Harold was even more absorbed than he by the 
anxiety of the position. Harold had been obliged to take oath that he 
would support William's claim to the English throne, but he was still 
undecided, and William knew men too well to feel much confidence in 
an oath. As Taillefer sang on, he reached the part of Ganelon, the 
typical traitor, the invariable figure of mediaeval society. No feudal 
lord was without a Ganelon. Duke William saw them all about him. 



24 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

He might have felt that Harold would play the part, but if Harold 
should choose rather to be Roland, Duke William could have foretold 
that his own brother. Bishop Odo, after gorging himself on the plunder 
of half England, would turn into a Ganelon so dangerous as to require 
a prison for life. When Taillefer reached the battle-scenes, there was 
no further need of imagination to realize them. They were scenes of 
yesterday and to-morrow. For that matter, Charlemagne or his suc- 
cessor was still at Aix, and the Moors were still in Spain. Archbishop 
Turpin of Rheims had fought with sword and mace in Spain, while 
Bishop Odo of Bayeux was to marshal his men at Hastings, like a 
modern general, with a staff, but both were equally at home on the 
field of battle. Verse by verse, the song was a literal mirror of the 
Mount. The battle of Hastings was to be fought on the Archangel's 
Day. What happened to Roland at Roncesvalles was to happen to 
Harold at Hastings, and Harold, as he was dying like Roland, was to 
see his brother Gyrth die like Oliver. Even Taillefer was to be a part, 
and a distinguished part, of his chanson. Sooner or later, all were to 
die in the large and simple way of the eleventh century. Duke William 
himself, twenty years later, was to meet a violent death at Mantes in 
the same spirit, and if Bishop Odo did not die in battle, he died, at 
least, like an eleventh-century hero, on the first crusade. First or last, 
the whole company died in fight, or in prison, or on crusade, while the 
monks shrived them and prayed. 

Then Taillefer certainly sang the great death-scenes. Even to this 
day every French school-boy, if he knows no other poetry, knows 
these verses by heart. In the eleventh century they wrung the heart 
of every man-at-arms in Europe, whose school was the field of battle 
and the hand-to-hand fight. No modern singer ever enjoys such power 
over an audience as Taillefer exercised over these men who were actors 
as well as listeners. In the m^lee at Roncesvalles, overborne by 
innumerable Saracens, Oliver at last calls for help : — 



LA CHANSON DE ROLAND 25 

Munjoie escriet e haltement e cler. "Montjoie!" he cries, loud and dear. 

RoUant apelet sun ami e sun per; Roland he calls, his friend and peer: 

" Sire compainz a mei kar vus justez. " Sir Friend! ride now to help me here! 

A grant dulur ermes hoi deserveret." Aoi. Parted to-day, great pity were." 

Of course the full value of the verse cannot be regained. One knows 
neither how it was sung nor even how it was pronounced. The asso- 
nances are beyond recovering; the "laisse" or leash of verses or 
assonances with the concluding cry, "Aoi," has long ago vanished 
from verse or song. The sense is as simple as the " Ballad of Chevy 
Chase," but one must imagine the voice and acting. Doubtless 
Taillef er acted each motive ; when Oliver called loud and clear, Taille- 
fer's voice rose; when Roland spoke "doulcement et suef," the singer 
must have sung gently and soft; and when the two friends, with the 
singular courtesy of knighthood and dignity of soldiers, bowed to each 
other in parting and turned to face their deaths, Taillefer may have 
indicated the movement as he sang. The verses gave room for great 
acting. Hearing Oliver's cry for help, Roland rode up, and at sight 
of the desperate field, lost for a moment his consciousness: — 

-As vus RoUant sur sun cheval pasmet There Roland sits unconscious on his horse, 

E Olivier ki est a mort nafrez! And Oliver who wounded is to death, 

Tant ad sainiet li oil li sunt trublet So much has bled, his eyes grow dark to him, 

Ne luinz ne pres ne poet veeir si cler Nor far nor near can see so clear 

Que reconuisset nisun hume mortel. As to recognize any mortal man. 

Sun cumpaignun cum il Pad encuntret His friend, when he has encountered him, 

Sil fiert amunt sur I'elme a or gemmet He strikes upon the helmet of gemmed gold. 

Tut li detrenchet d'ici que al nasel Splits it from the crown to the nose-piece, 

Mais en la teste ne Pad mie adeset. But to the head he has not reached at all. 

A icel colp I'ad Rollanz reguardet At this blow Roland looks at him. 

Si H demandet dulcement et suef Asks him gently and softly: 

"Sire cumpainz, faites le vus de gred? "Sir Friend, do you it in earnest? 

Ja est go Rollanz ki tant vus soelt amer. You know 't is Roland who has so loved you. 

Par nule guise ne m'aviez desfiet," In no way have you sent to me defiance." 

Dist Oliviers: "Or vus oi jo parler Says Oliver: "Indeed I hear you speak, 

lo ne vus vei. Veied vus da;mnedeus! I do not see you. May God see and save you! 

Ferut vus ai. Kar le me pardunez!" Strike you I did. I pray you pardon me." 

Rollanz respunt: "Jo n'ai nient de mel. Roland replies: "I have no harm at all. 

Jol vus parduins ici e devant deu." I pardon you here and before God!" 

A icel mot I'uns al altre ad clinet. At this word, one to the other bends himself. 

Par tel amur as les vus desevrez! With such affection, there they separate. 



26 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

No one should try to render this into English — or, indeed, into 
modern French — verse, but any one who will take the trouble to 
catch the metre and will remember that each verse in the "leash" ends 
in the same sound, — aimer, parler, cler, mortel, damnede, met, deu, 
suef, nasel, — however the terminal syllables may be spelled, can fol- 
low the feeling of the poetry as well as though it were Greek hexam- 
eter. He will feel the simple force of the words and action, as he feels 
Homer. It is the grand style, — the eleventh century: — 
Ferut vus ai! Kar le me pardunez! 

Not a syllable is lost, and always the strongest syllable is chosen. 
Even the sentiment is monosyllabic and curt : — 
Ja est g.0 RoUanz ki tant vus soelt amer! 

Taillefer had, in such a libretto, the means of producing dramatic 
effects that the French comedy or the grand opera never approached, 
and such as made Bayreuth seem thin and feeble. Duke William's 
barons must have clung to his voice and action as though they were in 
the very milee, striking at the helmets of gemmed gold. They had all 
been there, and were to be there again. As the climax approached, 
they saw the scene itself; probably they had seen it every year, more 
or less, since they could swing a sword. Taillefer chanted the death of 
Oliver and of Archbishop Turpin and all the other barons of the rear 
guard, except Roland, who was left for dead by the Saracens when they 
fled on hearing the horns of Charlemagne's returning host. Roland 
came back to consciousness on feeling a Saracen marauder tugging at 
his sword Durendal. With a blow of his ivory horn — oliphant — he 
killed the pagan; then feeling death near, he prepared for it. His first 
thought was for Durendal, his sword, which he could not leave to 
infidels. In the singular triple repetition which gives more of the same 
solidity and architectural weight to the verse, he made three attempts 
to break the sword, with a lament — a plaint — for each. Three times 
he struck with all his force against the rock; each time the sword 
rebounded without breaking. The third time — 



LA CHANSON DE ROLAND 27 

RoUanz ferit en une pierre bise Roland strikes on a grey stone, 

Plus en abat que jo ne vus sai dire. More of it cuts off than I can tell you. 

L'espee cruist ne fruisset ne ne briset The sword grinds, but shatters not nor breaks, 

Cuntre le del amunt est resortie. Upward against the sky it rebounds. 

Quant veit li quens que ne la f raindrat mie When the Count sees that he can never break it, 

Mult dulcement la plainst a sei meisme. Very gently he mourns it to himself: 

"E! Durendal cum ies bele e saintisme! "Ah, Durendal, how fair you are and sacred! 

En I'oret punt asez i ad reUques. In your golden guard are many relics, 

La dent saint Pierre e del sane seint Basilie The tooth of Saint Peter and blood of Saint 

Basil, 

E des chevels mun seignur seint Denisie And hair of my seigneur Saint-Denis, 

Del vestment i ad seinte Marie. Of the garment too of Saint Mary. 

II nen est dreiz que paien te baillisent. It is not right that pagans should own you. 

De chrestiens devez estre servie. By Christians you should be served, 

Ne vus ait hum ki facet cuardie! Nor should man have you who does cowardice. 

Mult larges terres de vus averai cunquises Many wide lands by you I have conquered 

Que Carles tient ki la barbe ad flurie. That Charles holds, who has the white beard, 

E li emperere en est e ber e riches." And emperor of them is noble and rich." 

This "laisse" is even more eleventh-century than the other, but it 
appealed no longer to the warriors; it spoke rather to the monks. To 
the warriors, the sword itself was the religion, and the relics were 
details of ornament or strength. To the priest, the list of relics was 
more eloquent than the Regent diamond on the hilt and the Kohinoor 
on the scabbard. Even to us it is interesting if it is understood. Roland 
had gone on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He had stopped at Rome 
and won the friendship of Saint Peter, as the tooth proved; he had 
passed through Constantinople and secured the help of Saint Basil; 
he had reached Jerusalem and gained the affection of the Virgin; he 
had come home to France and secured the support of his "seigneur" 
Saint Denis; for Roland, like Hugh Capet, was a liege-man of Saint 
Denis and French to the heart. France, to him, was Saint Denis, and 
at most the He de France, but not Anjou or even Maine. These were 
countries he had conquered with Durendal : — 

Jo Ten cunquis e Anjou e Bretaigne 
Si Ten cunquis e Peitou e le Maine 
Jo Ten cunquis Normendie la franche 
Si Ten cunquis Provence e Equitaigne. 



28 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



He had conquered these for his emperor Charlemagne with the help of 
his immediate spiritual lord or seigneur Saint Denis, but the monks 
knew that he could never have done these feats without the help of 
Saint Peter, Saint Basil, and Saint Mary the Blessed Virgin, whose 
relics, in the hilt of his sword, were worth more than any king's ran- 
som. To this day a tunic of the Virgin is the most precious property of 
the cathedral at Chartres. Either one of Roland's relics would have 
made the glory of any shrine in Europe, and every monk knew their 
enormous value and power better than he knew the value of Ro- 
land's conquests. 

Yet even the religion is martial, as though it were meant for the 
fighting Archangel and Odo of Bayeux. The relics serve the sword; 
the sword is not in service of the relics. As the death-scene approaches, 
the song becomes even more military: — 



Co sent RoUanz que la mort le tresprent 

Devers la teste sur le quer li descent. 

Desuz un pin i est alez curanz 

Sur I'erbe verte si est culchiez adenz 

Desuz lui met s'espee e I'olifant 

Turnat sa teste vers la paiene gent. 

Pur go I'ad fait que il voelt veirement 

Que Carles diet et trestute sa gent 

Li gentils quens quil fut morz cunqueranz. 



Then Roland feels that death is taking him; 
Down from the head upon the heart it falls. 
Beneath a pine he hastens running; 
On the green grass he throws himself down; 
Beneath him puts his sword and oliphant, 
Turns his face toward the pagan army. 
For this he does it, that he wishes greatly 
That Charles should say and all his men, 
The gentle Count has died a conqueror. 



Thus far, not a thought or a word strays from the field of war. With 
a childlike intensity, every syllable bends toward the single idea — 
Li gentils quens quil fut morz cunqueranz. 

Only then the singer allowed the Church to assert some of its rights: — 



^o sent RoUanz de sun tens ni ad plus 
Devers Espaigne gist en un pui agut 
A I'une main si ad sun piz batut. 
"Deus meie culpe vers les tues vertuz 
De mes pecchiez des granz e des menuz 
Que jo ai fait des I'ure que nez fui 
Tresqu'a cest jur que ci sm consouz." 
Sun destre guant en ad vers deu tendut 
Angle del del i descendent a lui. Aoi. 



Then Roland feels that his last hour has come 
Facing toward Spain he lies on a steep hill, 
While with one hand he beats upon his breast: 
"Mea culpa, God! through force of thy miracles 
Pardon my sins, the great as well as small, 
That I have done from the hour I was born 
Down to this day that I have now attained." 
His right glove toward God he lifted up. 
Angels from heaven descend on him. Aoi. 



LA CHANSON DE ROLAND 



29 



Li quens RoUanz se jut desuz un pin 
Envers Espaigne en ad turnet sun vis 
De plusurs choses a remembrer li prist 
De tantes terres cume li bers cunquist 

De dulce France des humes de sun lign 
De Carlemagne sun seignur kil nurrit 
Ne poet muer men plurt e ne suspirt 
Mais lui meisme ne voelt metre en ubli 
Claimet sa culpe si priet deu mercit. 
"Veire paterne ki unkes ne mentis 
Seint Lazarun de mort resurrexis 
E Daniel des liuns guaresis 
Guaris de mei I'anme de tuz perils 
Pur les pecchiez que en ma vie fis." 

Sun destre guant a deu en puroffrit 
E de sa main seinz Gabriel lad pris 
Desur sun braz teneit le chief enclin 
Juintes ses mains est alez a sa fin. 
Deus li tramist sun angle cherubin 
E Seint Michiel de la mer del peril 
Ensemble od els Seinz Gabriels i vint 
L' anme del cunte portent en pareis. 



Count Roland throws himself beneath a pine 
And toward Spain has turned his face away. 
Of many things he called the memory back, 
Of many lands that he, the brave, had con- 
quered, 
Of gentle France, the men of his lineage. 
Of Charlemagne his lord, who nurtured him; 
He cannot help but weep and sigh for these, 
But for himself will not forget to care; 
He cries his Culpe, he prays to God for grace. 
"O God the Father who has never lied. 
Who raised up Saint Lazarus from death. 
And Daniel from the lions saved. 
Save my soul from all the perils 
For the sins that in my life I did!" 

His right-hand glove to God he proffered; 
Saint Gabriel from his hand took it ; 
Upon his arm he held his head inclined, 
Folding his hands he passed to his end. 
God sent to him his angel cherubim 
And Saint Michael of the Sea in Peril, 
Together with them came Saint Gabriel. 
The soul of the Count they bear to Paradise. 



Our age has lost much of its ear for poetry, as it has its eye for colour 
and line, and its taste for war and worship, wine and women. Not one 
man in a hundred thousand could now feel what the eleventh century 
felt in these verses of the " Chanson," and there is no reason for trying 
to do so, but there is a certain use in trying for once to understand not 
so much the feeling as the meaning. The naivete of the poetry is that 
of the society. God the Father was the feudal seigneur, who raised 
Lazarus — his baron or vassal — from the grave, and freed Daniel, 
as an evidence of his power and loyalty; a seigneur who never lied, or 
was false to his word. God the Father, as feudal seigneur, absorbs the 
Trinity, and, what is more significant, absorbs or excludes also the 
Virgin, who is not mentioned in the prayer. To this seigneur, Roland 
in dying, proffered (puroffrit) his right-hand gauntlet. Death was an 
act of homage. God sent down his Archangel Gabriel as his represen- 
tative to accept the homage and receive the glove. To Duke William 



30 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

and his barons nothing could seem more natural and correct. God was 
not farther away than Charlemagne. 

Correct as the law may have been, the religion even at that time 
must have seemed to the monks to need professional advice. Roland's 
life was not exemplary. The " Chanson " had taken pains to show that 
the disaster at Roncesvalles was due to Roland's headstrong folly and 
temper. In dying, Roland had not once thought of these faults, or 
repented of his worldly ambitions, or mentioned the name of Alda, his 
betrothed. He had clung to the memory of his wars and conquests, 
his lineage, his earthly seigneur Charlemagne, and of "douce France." 
He had forgotten to give so much as an allusion to Christ. The poet 
regarded all these matters as the affair of the Church ; all the warrior 
cared for was courage, loyalty, and prowess. 

The interest of these details lies not in the scholarship or the his- 
torical truth or even the local colour, so much as in the art. The 
naivete of the thought is repeated by the simplicity of the verse. Word 
and thought are equally monosyllabic. Nothing ever matched it. The 
words bubble like a stream in the woods : — 

Co sent RoUanz de sun tens ni ad plus. 

Try and put them into modern French, and see what will happen: — 

Que jo ai fait des I'ure que nez fui. 

The words may remain exactly the same, but the poetry will have 
gone out of them. Five hundred years later, even the English critics 
had so far lost their sense for military poetry that they professed to be 
shocked by Milton's monosyllables: — 

Whereat he inly raged, and, as they talked, 
Smote him into the midriff with a stone 
That beat out Ufe. 

Milton's language was indeed more or less archaic and Biblical; it 
was a Puritan affectation; but the "Chanson" in the refectory act- 
ually reflected, repeated, echoed, the piers and arches of the Abbey 
Church just rising above. The verse is built up. The qualities of the 



LA CHANSON DE ROLAND 31 

architecture reproduce themselves in the song : the same directness, 
simpHcity, absence of self-consciousness; the same intensity of pur- 
pose ; even the same material ; the prayer is granite : — 

Guaris de mei I'anme de tuz perils 
Pur les pecchiez que en ma vie fis! 

The action of dying is felt, like the dropping of a keystone into the 
vault, and if the Romanesque arches in the church, which are within 
hearing, could speak, they would describe what they are doing in the 
precise words of the poem : ^- 

Desur sun braz teneit le chief enclin Upon their shoulders have their heads indined, 

Juintes ses mains est alez a sa fin. Folded their hands, and simken to their rest. 

Many thousands of times these verses must have been sung at the 
Mount and echoed in every castle and on every battle-field from the 
Welsh Marches to the shores of the Dead Sea. No modern opera or 
play ever approached the popularity of the ' ' Chanson. ' ' None has ever 
expressed with anything like the same completeness the society that 
produced it. Chanted by every minstrel, — known by heart, from 
beginning to end, by every man and woman and child, lay or clerical, 
— translated into every tongue, — more intensely felt, if possible, in 
Italy and Spain than in Normandy and England, — perhaps most 
effective, as a work of art, when sung by the Templars in their great 
castles in the Holy Land, — it is now best felt at Mont-Saint-Michel, 
and from the first must have been there at home. The proof is the line, 
evidently inserted for the sake of its local effect, which invoked Saint 
Michael in Peril of the Sea at the climax of Roland's death, and one 
needs no original documents or contemporary authorities to prove that, 
when Taillefer came to this invocation, not only Duke William and 
his barons, but still more Abbot Ranulf and his monks, broke into a 
frenzy of sympathy which expressed the masculine and military pas- 
sions of the Archangel better than it accorded with the rules of Saint 
Benedict. 



CHAPTER III 

THE MERVEILLE 

THE nineteenth century moved fast and furious, so that one who 
moved in it felt sometimes giddy, watching it spin; but the 
eleventh moved faster and more furiously still. The Norman con- 
quest of England was an immense effort, and its consequences were 
far-reaching, but the first crusade was altogether the most interesting 
event in European history. Never has the Western world shown any- 
thing like the energy and unity with which she then flung herself on 
the East, and for the moment made the East recoil. Barring her family 
quarrels, Europe was a unity then, in thought, will, and object. Chris- 
tianity was the unit. Mont-Saint-Michel and Byzantium were near 
each other. The Emperor Constantine and the Emperor Charlemagne 
were figured as allies and friends in the popular legend. The East was 
the common enemy, always superior in wealth and numbers, fre- 
quently in energy, and sometimes in thought and art. The outburst 
of the first crusade was splendid even in a military sense, but it was 
great beyond comparison in its reflection in architecture, ornament, 
poetry, colour, religion, and philosophy. Its men were astonishing, 
and its women were worth all the rest. 

Mont-Saint-Michel, better than any other spot in the world, keeps 
the architectural record of that ferment, much as the Sicilian temples 
keep the record of the similar outburst of Greek energy, art, poetry, 
and thought, fifteen hundred years before. Of the eleventh century, 
it is true, nothing but the church remains at the Mount, and, if studied 
further, the century has got to be sought elsewhere, which is not diffi- 
cult, since it is preserved in any number of churches in every path of 
tourist travel. Normandy is full of it ; Bayeux and Caen contain little 
else. At the Mount, the eleventh-century work was antiquated before 



THE MERVEILLE 33 

it was finished. In the year 11 12, Abbot Roger II was obliged to plan 
and construct a new group in such haste that it is said to have been 
finished in 1 122. It extends from what we have supposed to be the old 
refectory to the parvis, and abuts on the three lost spans of the 
church, covering about one hundred and twenty feet. As usual there 
were three levels; a crypt or gallery beneath, known as the Aquilon; a 
cloister or promenoir above ; and on the level of the church a dormitory, 
now lost. The group is one of the most interesting in France, another 
pons seclorum, an antechamber to the west portal of Chartres, which 
bears the same date (i 1 10-25). It is the famous period of Transition, 
the glory of the twelfth century, the object of our pilgrimage. 

Art is a fairly large field where no one need jostle his neighbour, 
and no one need shut himself up in a corner; but, if one insists on taking 
a corner of preference, one might offer some excuse for choosing the 
Gothic Transition. The quiet, restrained strength of the Romanesque 
married to the graceful curves and vaulting imagination of the Gothic 
makes a union nearer the ideal than is often allowed in marriage. The 
French, in their best days, loved it with a constancy that has thrown 
a sort of aureole over their fickleness since. They never tired of its 
possibilities. Sometimes they put the pointed arch within the round, 
or above it; sometimes they put the round within the pointed. Some- 
times a Roman arch covered a cluster of pointed windows, as though 
protecting and caressing its children; sometimes a huge pointed arch 
covered a great rose-window spreading across the whole front of an 
enormous cathedral, with an arcade of Romanesque windows beneath. 
The French architects felt no discord, and there was none. Even the 
pure Gothic was put side by side with the pure Roman. You will see 
no later Gothic than the choir of the Abbey Church above (1450- 
1521), unless it is the north fleche of Chartres Cathedral (1507-13); 
and if you will look down the nave, through the triumphal arches, into 
the pointed choir four hundred years more modern, you can judge 
whether there is any real discord. For those who feel the art, there is 



34 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

none; the strength and the grace join hands; the man and woman love 
each other still. 

The difference of sex is not imaginary. In 1058, when the triumphal 
columns were building, and Taillefer sang to William the Bastard and 
Harold the Saxon, Roland still prayed his *'mea culpa" to God the 
Father and gave not a thought to Alda his betrothed. In the twelfth 
century Saint Bernard recited **Ave Stella Maris" in an ecstasy of 
miracle before the image of the Virgin, and the armies of France in 
battle cried, " Not re- Dame-Saint -Denis- Montjoie." What the Roman 
could not express flowered into the Gothic ; what the masculine mind 
could not idealize in the warrior, it idealized in the woman ; no archi- 
tecture that ever grew on earth, except the Gothic, gave this effect of 
flinging its passion against the sky. 

When men no longer felt the passion, they fell back on themselves, 
or lower. The architect returned to the round arch, and even further 
to the flatness of the Greek colonnade; but this was not the fault of 
the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. What they had to say they said ; 
what they felt they expressed; and if the seventeenth century forgot 
it, the twentieth in turn has forgotten the seventeenth. History is only 
a catalogue of the forgotten. The eleventh century is no worse off than 
its neighbours. The twelfth is, in architecture, rather better off than 
the nineteentn. These two rooms, the Aquilon and promenoir, which 
mark the beginning of the Transition, are, on the whole, more modern 
than Saint-Sulpice, or II Gesu at Rome. In the same situation, for the 
same purposes, any architect would be proud to repeat them to-day. 

The Aquilon, though a hall or gallery of importance in its day, 
seems to be classed among crypts. M. Camille Enlart, in his " Manual 
of French Archaeology" (p. 252) gives a list of Romanesque and Tran- 
sition crypts, about one hundred and twenty, to serve as examples for 
the study. The Aquilon is not one of them, but the crypt of Saint- 
Denis and that of Chartres Cathedral would serve to teach any over- 
curious tourist all that he should want to know about such matters. 




ABBEY OF MONT-SAINT-MICHEL: THE REFECTORY 



THE MERVEILLE 35 

Photographs such as those of the Monuments Historlques answer all 
the just purposes of underground travel. The Aquilon is one's first 
lesson in Transition architecture because it is dated (11 12); and the 
crypt of Saint-Denis serves almost equally well because the Abbe 
Suger must have begun his plans for it about 1122. Both have the 
same arcs doubleaux and arcs-formerets, though in opposite arrange- 
ment. Both show the first heavy hint at the broken arch. There are no 
nervures — no rib-vaulting, — and hardly a suggestion of the Gothic 
as one sees it in the splendid crypt of the Gros Fillers close at hand, 
except the elaborately intersecting vaults and the heavy columns; 
but the promenoir above is an astonishing leap in time and art. The 
promenoir has the same arrangement and columns as the Aquilon, but 
the vaults are beautifully arched and pointed, with ribs rising directly 
from the square capitals and intersecting the central spacings, in a 
spirit which neither you nor I know how to distinguish from the pure 
Gothic of the thirteenth century, unless it is that the arches are hardly 
pointed enough; they seem to the eye almost round. The height ap- 
pears to be about fourteen feet. 

The promenoir of Abbot Roger II has an interest to pilgrims who 
are going on to the shrine of the Virgin, because the date of the pro- 
menoir seems to be exactly the same as the date which the Abbe 
Bulteau assigns for the western portal of Chartres. Ordinarily a date 
is no great matter, but when one has to run forward and back, with the 
agility of an electric tram, between two or three fixed points, it is 
convenient to fix them once for all. The Transition is complete here 
in the promenoir, which was planned as early as 11 15. The subject of 
vaulting is far too ambitious for summer travel ; it is none too easy for 
a graduate of the Beaux Arts ; and few architectural fields have been so 
earnestly discussed and disputed. We must not touch it. The age of 
the " Chanson de Roland " itself is not so dangerous a topic. Our vital 
needs are met, more or less sufficiently, by taking the promenoir at the 
Mount, the crypt at Saint-Denis, and the western portal at Chartres, 



36 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

as the trinity of our Transition, and roughly calling their date the 
years 1 1 1 5-20. To overload the memory with dates is the vice of every 
schoolmaster and the passion of every second-rate scholar. Tourists 
want as few dates as possible; what they want is poetry. Yet a singu- 
lar coincidence, with which every classroom is only too familiar, has 
made of the years -'15 a curiously convenient group, and the year 1 1 15 
is as convenient as any for the beginning of the century of Transition. 
That was the year when Saint Bernard laid the foundations of his 
Abbey of Clairvaux. Perhaps 11 15, or at latest 11 17, was the year 
when Abelard sang love-songs to H61oise in Canon Fulbert's house 
in the Rue des Chantres, beside the cloister of Notre Dame in Paris. 
The Abbe Suger, the Abbe Bernard, and the Abbe Abelard are the 
three interesting men of the French Transition. 

The promenoir, then, shall pass for the year 11 15, and, as such, is 
an exceedingly beautiful hall, uniting the splendid calm and serious- 
ness of the Romanesque with the exquisite lines of the Gothic. You 
will hardly see its equal in the twelfth century. At Angers the great 
hall of the Bishop's Palace survives to give a point of comparison, but 
commonly the halls of that date were not vaulted; they had timber 
roofs, and have perished. The promenoir is about sixty feet long, and 
divided into two aisles, ten feet wide, by a row of columns. If it were 
used on great occasions as a refectory, eighty or a hundred persons 
could have been seated at table, and perhaps this may have been about 
the scale of the Abbey's needs, at that time. Whatever effort of fancy 
was needed to place Duke William and Harold in the old refectory of 
1058, none whatever is required in order to see his successors in the 
halls of Roger II. With one exception they were not interesting per- 
sons. The exception was Henry II of England and Anjou, and his wife 
Eleanor of Guienne, who was for a while Regent of Normandy. One of 
their children was born at Domfront, just beyond Avranches, and the 
Abbot was asked to be godfather. In 1158, just one hundred years 
after Duke William's visit, King Henry and his whole suite came to the 



THE MERVEILLE 37 

Abbey, heard mass, and dined in the refectory. "Rex venit ad Mon- 
tem Sancti MichaeHs, audita missa ad magis altare, comedit in Refec- 
torio cum baronibus suis." Abbot Robert of Torigny was his host, 
and very possibly WilUam of Saint-Pair looked on. Perhaps he recited 
parts of his "Roman" before the King. One may be quite sure that 
when Queen Eleanor came to the Mount she asked the poet to recite 
his verses, for Eleanor gave law to poets. 

One might linger over Abbot Robert of Torigny, who was a very 
great man in his day, and an especially great architect, but too ambi- 
tious. All his work, including the two towers, crumbled and fell for 
want of proper support. What would correspond to the cathedrals of 
Noyon and Soissons and the old clocher and fleche of Chartres is lost. 
We have no choice but to step down into the next century at once, and 
into the full and perfect Gothic of the great age when the new Chartres 
was building. 

In the year 1203, Philip Augustus expelled the English from Nor- 
mandy and conquered the province; but, in the course of the war the 
Duke of Brittany, who was naturally a party to any war that took 
place under his eyes, happened to burn the town beneath the Abbey, 
and in doing so, set fire unintentionally to the Abbey itself. The sacri- 
lege shocked Philip Augustus, and the wish to conciliate so powerful a 
vassal as Saint Michel, or his abbot, led the King of France to give a 
large sum of money for repairing the buildings. The Abbot Jordan 
(1191-1212) at once undertook to outdo all his predecessors, and, with 
an immense ambition, planned the huge pile which covers the whole 
north face of the Mount, and which has always borne the expressive 
name of the Merveille. 

The general motive of abbatial building was common to them all. 
Abbeys were large households. The church was the centre, and at 
Mont-Saint-Michel the summit, for the situation compelled the ab- 
bots there to pile one building on another instead of arranging them on 
a level in squares or parallelograms. The dormitory in any case had to 



38 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

be near a door of the church, because the Rule required constant serv- 
ices, day and night. The cloister was also hard-by the church door, 
and, at the Mount, had to be on the same level in order to be in open 
air. Naturally the refectory must be immediately beneath one or the 
other of these two principal structures, and the hall, or place of meet- 
ing for business with the outside world, or for internal administration, 
or for guests of importance, must be next the refectory. The kitchen 
and offices would be placed on the lowest stage, if for no other reason, 
because the magazines were two hundred feet below at the landing- 
place, and all supplies, including water, had to be hauled up an in- 
clined plane by windlass. To administer such a society required the 
most efficient management. An abbot on this scale was a very great 
man, indeed, who enjoyed an establishment of his own, close by, with 
officers in no small number ; for the monks alone numbered sixty, and 
even these were not enough for the regular church services at seasons 
of pilgrimage. The Abbot was obliged to entertain scores and hun- 
dreds of guests, and these, too, of the highest importance, with large 
suites. Every ounce of food must be brought from the mainland, or 
fished from the sea. All the tenants and their farms, their rents and 
contributions, must be looked after. No secular prince had a more 
serious task of administration, and none did it so well. Tenants always 
preferred an abbot or bishop for landlord. The Abbey was the highest 
administrative creation of the Middle Ages, and when one has made 
one's pilgrimage to Chartres, one might well devote another summer 
to visiting what is left of Clairvaux, Citeaux, Cluny, and the other 
famous monasteries, with Viollet-le-Duc to guide, in order to satisfy 
one's mind whether, on the whole, such a life may not have had activity 
as well as idleness. 

This is a matter of economics, to be settled with the keepers of more 
modern hotels, but the art had to suit the conditions, and when Abbot 
Jordan decided to plaster this huge structure against the side of the 
Mount, the architect had a relatively simple task to handle. The 



THE MERVEILLE 39 

engineering difficulties alone were very serious. The architectural plan 
was plain enough. As the Abbot laid his requirements before the 
architect, he seems to have begun by fixing the scale for a refectory 
capable of seating two hundred guests at table. Probably no king in 
Europe fed more persons at his table than this. According to M. Cor- 
royer's plan, the length of the new refectory is one hundred and twenty- 
three feet (37.5 metres). A row of columns down the centre divides it 
into two aisles, measuring twelve feet clear, from column to column, 
across the room. If tables were set the whole length of the two aisles, 
forty persons could have been easily seated, in four rows, or one 
hundred and sixty persons. Without crowding, the same space would 
give room for fifty guests, or two hundred in all. 

Once the scale was fixed, the arrangement was easy. Beginning at 
the lowest possible level, one plain, very solidly built, vaulted room 
served as foundation for another, loftier and more delicately vaulted ; 
and this again bore another which stood on the level of the church, 
and opened directly into the north transept. This arrangement was 
then doubled; and the second set of rooms, at the west end, contained 
the cellar on the lower level, another great room or hall above it, and the 
cloister at the church door, also entering into the north transept. Door- 
ways, passages, and stairs unite them all. The two heavy halls on the 
lowest level are now called the almonry and the cellar, which is a 
distinction between administrative arrangements that does not con- 
cern us. Architecturally the rooms might, to our untrained eyes, be of 
the same age with the Aquilon. They are earliest Transition, as far as a 
tourist can see, or at least they belong to the class of crypts which has 
an architecture of its own. The rooms that concern us are those imme- 
diately above : the so-called Salle des Chevaliers at the west end ; and 
the so-called refectory at the east. Every writer gives these rooms 
different names, and assigns them different purposes, but whatever 
they were meant for, they are, as halls, the finest in France ; the purest 
in thirteenth-century perfection. 



40 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

The Salle des Chevaliers of the Order of Saint Michael created by 
Louis XI in 1469 was, or shall be for tourist purposes, the great hall 
that every palace and castle contained, and in which the life of the 
chateau centred. Planned at about the same time with the Cathedral 
of Chartres (i 195-12 10), and before the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis, 
this hall and its neighbour the refectory, studied together with the 
cathedral and the abbey, are an exceedingly liberal education for 
anybody, tourist or engineer or architect, and would make the fortune 
of an intelligent historian, if such should happen to exist ; but the last 
thing we ask from them Is education or instruction. We want only 
their poetry, and shall have to look for it elsewhere. Here is only the 
shell — the dead art — and silence. The hall Is about ninety feet long, 
and sixty feet in its greatest width. It has three ranges of columns 
making four vaulted aisles which seem to rise about twenty-two feet In 
height. It is warmed by two huge and heavy cheminees or fireplaces in 
the outside wall, between the windows. It is lighted beautifully, but 
mostly from above through round windows in the arching of the 
vaults. The vaulting is a study for wiser men than we can ever be. 
More than twenty strong round columns, free or engaged, with Roman- 
esque capitals, support heavy ribs, or nervures, and while the two cen- 
tral aisles are eighteen feet wide, the outside aisle, into which the 
windows open, measures only ten feet in width, and has consequently 
one of the most sharply pointed vaults we shall ever meet. The whole 
design is as beautiful a bit of early Gothic as exists, but what would 
take most time to study, if time were to spare, would be the Instinct 
of the Archangel's presence which has animated his architecture. The 
masculine, military energy of Saint Michael lives still in every stone. 
The genius that realized this warlike emotion has stamped his power 
everywhere, on every centimetre of his work; in every ray of light; on 
the mass of every shadow; wherever the eye falls; still more strongly 
on all that the eye divines, and in the shadows that are felt like the 
lights. The architect intended it all. Any one who doubts has only to 



THE MERVEILLE 41 

step through the doorway in the corner into the refectory. There the 
architect has undertaken to express the thirteenth-century idea of the 
Archangel; he has left the twelfth century behind him. 

The refectory, which has already served for a measure of the Abbot's 
scale, is, in feeling, as different as possible from the hall. Six charming 
columns run down the centre, dividing the room into two vaulted 
aisles, apparently about twenty-seven feet in height. Wherever the 
hall was heavy and serious, the refectory was made light and graceful. 
Hardly a trace of the Romanesque remains. Only the slight, round 
columns are not yet grooved or fluted, and their round capitals are 
still slightly severe. Every detail is lightened. The great fireplaces 
are removed to each end of the room. The most interesting change is 
in the windows. When you reach Chartres, the great book of archi- 
tecture will open on the word " Fenestration," — Fenetre, — a word as 
ugly as the thing was beautiful; and then, with pain and sorrow, you 
will have to toil till you see how the architects of 1200 subordinated 
every other problem to that of lighting their spaces. Without feeling 
their lights, you can never feel their shadows. These two halls at 
Mont-Saint-Michel are antechambers to the nave of Chartres; their 
fenestration, inside and out, controls the whole design. The lighting 
of the refectory is superb, but one feels its value in art only when it is 
taken in relation to the lighting of the hall, and both serve as a simple 
preamble to the romance of the Chartres windows. 

The refectory shows what the architect did when, to lighten his 
effects, he wanted to use every possible square centimetre of light. He 
has made nine windows; six on the north, two on the east, and one on 
the south. They are nearly five feet wide, and about twenty feet high. 
They flood the room. Probably they were intended for glass, and 
M. Corroyer's volume contains wood-cuts of a few fragments of thir- 
teenth-century glass discovered in his various excavations; but one 
may take for granted that with so much light, colour was the object 
intended. The floors would be tiled in colour; the walls would be hung 



42 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

with colour; probably the vaults were painted in colour; one can see 
it all in scores of illuminated manuscripts. The thirteenth century had 
a passion for colour, and made a colour- world of its own which we have 
got to explore. 

The two halls remain almost the only monuments of what must be 
called secular architecture of the early and perfect period of Gothic 
art (1200-10). Churches enough remain, with Chartres at their head, 
but all the great abbeys, palaces and chateaux of that day are ruins. 
Arques, Gaillard, Montargis, Coucy, the old Louvre, Chinon, Angers, 
as well as Cluny, Clairvaux, Citeaux, Jumieges, Vezelay, Saint-Denis, 
Poissy, Fontevrault, and a score of other residences, royal or semi- 
royal, have disappeared wholly, or have lost their residential build- 
ings. When Viollet-le-Duc, under the Second Empire, was allowed to 
restore one great chateau, he chose the latest, Pierrefonds, built by 
Louis d'Orleans in 1390. Vestiges of Saint Louis's palace remain at 
the Conciergerie, but the first great royal residence to be compared 
with the Merveille is Amboise, dating from about 1500, three centu- 
ries later. Civilization made almost a clean sweep of art. Only here, at 
Mont-Salnt-Michel, one may still sit at ease on the stone benches in 
the embrasures of the refectory windows, looking over the thirteenth- 
century ocean and watching the architect as he worked out the details 
which were to produce or accent his contrasts or harmonies, heighten 
his effects, or hide his show of effort, and all by means so true, simple, 
and apparently easy that one seems almost competent to follow him. 
One learns better in time. One gets to feel that these things were due 
in part to an instinct that the architect himself might not have been 
able to explain. The instinct vanishes as time creeps on. The halls at 
Rouen or at Blois are more easily understood ; the Salle des Caryatides 
of Pierre Lescot at the Louvre, charming as it is, is simpler still; and 
one feels entirely at home in the Salle des Glaces which filled the 
ambition of Louis XIV at Versailles. 

If any lingering doubt remains in regard to the professional clever- 



THE MERVEILLE 43 

ness of the architect and the thoroughness of his study, we had best 
return to the great hall, and pass through a low door in its extreme 
outer angle, up a few steps into a little room some thirteen feet square, 
beautifully vaulted, lighted, warmed by a large stone fireplace, and in 
the corner, a spiral staircase leading up to another square room above 
opening directly into the cloister. It is a little library or charter-house. 
The arrangement is almost too clever for gravity, as is the case with 
more than one arrangement in the Merveille. From the outside one 
can see that at this corner the architect had to provide a heavy buttress 
against a double strain, and he built up from the rock below a square 
corner tower as support, into which he worked a spiral staircase lead- 
ing from the cellar up to the cloisters. Just above the level of the great 
hall he managed to construct this little room, a gem. The place was 
near and far; it was quiet and central; William of Saint-Pair, had he 
been still alive, might have written his " Roman" there; monks might 
have illuminated missals there. A few steps upward brought them to 
the cloisters for meditation; a few more brought them to the church 
for prayer. A few steps downward brought them to the great hall, for 
business, a few steps more led them into the refectory, for dinner. To 
contemplate the goodness of God was a simple joy when one had such 
a room to work in; such a spot as the great hall to walk in, when the 
storms blew; or the cloisters in which to meditate, when the sun shone; 
such a dining-room as the refectory; and such a view from one's 
windows over the infinite ocean and the guiles of Satan's quicksands. 
From the battlements of Heaven, William of Saint-Pair looked down 
on it with envy. 

Of all parts of the Merveille, in summer, the most charming must 
always have been the cloisters. Only the Abbey of the Mount was 
rich and splendid enough to build a cloister like this, all in granite, 
carved in forms as light as though it were wood; with columns arranged 
in a peculiar triangular order that excited the admiration of Viollet-le- 
Duc. "One of the most curious and complete cloisters that we have in 



44 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

France," he said; although in France there are many beautiful and 
curious cloisters. For another reason it has value. The architect 
meant it to reassert, with all the art and grace he could command, the 
mastery of love, of thought and poetry, in religion, over the masculine, 
military energy of the great hall below. The thirteenth century rarely 
let slip a chance to insist on this moral that love is law. Saint Francis 
was preaching to the birds in 12 15 at Assisi, and the architect built 
this cloister in 1226 at Mont-Saint-Michel. Both sermons were satu- 
rated with the feeling of the time, and both are about equally worth 
noting, if one aspires to feel the art. 

A conscientious student has yet to climb down the many steps, on 
the outside, and look up at the Merveille from below. Few buildings 
in France are better worth the trouble. The horizontal line at the roof 
measures two hundred and thirty-five feet. The vertical line of the 
buttresses measures in round numbers one hundred feet. To make 
walls of that height and length stand up at all was no easy matter, as 
Robert de Torigny had shown; and so the architect buttressed them 
from bottom to top with twelve long buttresses against the thrust of 
the interior arches, and three more, bearing against the interior walls. 
This gives, on the north front, fifteen strong vertical lines in a space of 
two hundred and thirty-five feet. Between these lines the windows 
tell their story ; the seven long windows of the refectory on one side ; 
the seven rounded windows of the hall on the other. Even the corner 
tower with the charter-house becomes as simple as the rest. The sum 
of this impossible wall, and its exaggerated vertical lines, is strength 
and intelligence at rest. 

The whole Mount still kept the grand style ; it expressed the unity 
of Church and State, God and Man, Peace and War, Life and Death, 
Good and Bad ; it solved the whole problem of the universe. The priest 
and the soldier were both at home here, in 1215 as in 11 15 or in 1058; 
the politician was not outside of it ; the sinner was welcome ; the poet 
was made happy in his own spirit, with a sympathy, almost an affec- 



THE MERVEILLE 45 

tion, that suggests a habit of verse in the Abbot as well as in the archi- 
tect. God reconciles all. The world is an evident, obvious, sacred 
harmony. Even the discord of war is a detail on which the Abbey 
refuses to insist. Not till two centuries afterwards did the Mount take 
on the modern expression of war as a discord in God's providence. 
Then, in the early years of the fifteenth century, Abbot Pierre le Roy 
plastered the gate of the chatelet, as you now see it, over the sunny 
thirteenth-century entrance called Belle Chaise, which had treated 
mere military construction with a sort of quiet contempt. You will 
know what a chatelet is when you meet another ; it frowns in a spirit 
quite alien to the twelfth century; it jars on the religion of the place; 
it forebodes wars of religion; dissolution of society; loss of unity; the 
end of a world. Nothing is sadder than the catastrophe of Gothic art, 
religion, and hope. 

One looks back on it all as a picture; a symbol of unity; an assertion 
of God and Man in a bolder, stronger, closer union than ever was 
expressed by other art ; and when the idea is absorbed, accepted, and 
perhaps partially understood, one may move on. 



CHAPTER IV 

NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE 

FROM Mont-Saint-Michel, the architectural road leads across Nor- 
mandy, up the Seine to Paris, and not directly through Chartres, 
which lies a little to the south. In the empire of architecture, Nor- 

A 

mandy was one kingdom, Brittany another; the He de France, with 
Paris, was a third; Touraine and the valley of the Loire were a fourth; 
and in the centre, the fighting-ground between them all, lay the coun- 
ties of Chartres and Dreux. Before going to Chartres one should go 
up the Seine and down the Loire, from Angers to Le Mans, and so 
enter Chartres from Brittany after a complete circle ; but if we set out 
to do our pleasure on that scale, we must start from the Pyramid of 
Cheops. We have set out from Mont-Saint-Michel; we will go next to 
Paris. 

The architectural highway lies through Coutances, Bayeux, Caen, 
Rouen, and Mantes. Every great artistic kingdom solved its archi- 
tectural problems in its own way, as it did its religious, political, and 
social problems, and no two solutions were ever quite the same; but 
among them the Norman was commonly the most practical, and 
sometimes the most dignified. We can test this rule by the standard 
of the first town we stop at — Coutances. We can test it equally well at 
Bayeux or Caen, but Coutances comes first after Mont-Saint-Michel ; 
let us begin with it, and state the problems with their Norman solu- 
tion, so that it may be ready at hand to compare with the French 
solution, before coming to the solution at Chartres. 

The cathedral at Coutances is said to be about the age of the Mer- 
veille (1200-50), but the exact dates are unknown, and the work is so 
Norman as to stand by itself; yet the architect has grappled with 
more problems than one need hope to see solved in any single church 




COUTANCES CATHEDRAL 



NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE 47 

A 

in the He de France. Even at Chartres, although the two stone fleches 
are, by exception, completed, they are not of the same age, as they are 
here. Neither at Chartres nor at Paris, nor at Laon or Amiens or 
Rheims or Bourges, will you see a central tower to compare with the 
enormous pile at Coutances. Indeed the architects of France failed to 
solve this particular church problem, and we shall leave it behind us 
in leaving Normandy, although it is the most effective feature of any 
possible church. "A clocher of that period {circa 1200), built over the 
croisee of a cathedral, following lines so happy, should be a monument 
of the greatest beauty; unfortunately we possess not a single one in 
France. Fire, and the hand of man more than time, have destroyed 
them all, and we find on our greatest religious edifices no more than 
bases and fragments of these beautiful constructions. The cathedral 
of Coutances alone has preserved its central clocher of the thirteenth 
century, and even there it is not complete ; its stone fleche is wanting. 
As for its style, it belongs to Norman architecture, and diverges widely 
from the character of French architecture." So says Viollet-le-Duc; 
but although the great churches for the most part never had central 
clochers, which, on the scale of Amiens, Bourges, or Beauvais, would 
have required an impossible mass, the smaller churches frequently 
carry them still, and they are, like the dome, the most effective features 
they can carry. They were made to dominate the whole. 

No doubt the fleche is wanting at Coutances, but you can supply 
it in imagination from the two fleches of the western tower, which are as 
simple and severe as the spear of a man-at-arms. Supply the fleche, 
and the meaning of the tower cannot be mistaken ; it is as military as 
the "Chanson de Roland"; it is the man-at-arms himself, mounted 
and ready for battle, spear in rest. The mere seat of the central tower 
astride of the church, so firm, so fixed, so serious, so defiant, is Norman, 
like the seat of the Abbey Church on the Mount ; and at Falaise, where 
William the Bastard was born, we shall see a central tower on the 
church which is William himself, in armour, on horseback, ready to 



48 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

fight for the Church, and perhaps, in his bad moods, against it. Such 
miUtant churches were capable of forcing Heaven itself; all of them 
look as though they had fought at Hastings or stormed Jerusalem. 
Wherever the Norman central clocher stands, the Church Militant of 
the eleventh century survives; — not the Church of Mary Queen, but 
of Michael the Archangel; — not the Church of Christ, but of God the 
Father — Who never lied ! 

Taken together with the fleches of the fagade, this clocher of Cou- 
tances forms a group such as one very seldom sees. The two towers 
of the fagade are something apart, quite by themselves among the 
innumerable church-towers of the Gothic time. We have got a happy 
summer before us, merely in looking for these church-towers. There is 
no livelier amusement for fine weather than in hunting them as though 
they were mushrooms, and no study in architecture nearly so delight- 
ful. No work of man has life like the fleche. One sees it for a greater 
distance and feels it for a longer time than is possible with any other 
human structure, unless it be the dome. There is more play of light on 
the octagonal faces of the fleche as the sun moves around them than 
can be got out of the square or the cone or any other combination of 
surfaces. For some reason, the facets of the hexagon or octagon are 
more pleasing than the rounded surfaces of the cone, and Normandy is 
said to be peculiarly the home of this particularly Gothic church 
ornament ; yet clochers and fleches are scattered all over France until 
one gets to look for them on the horizon as though every church in 
every hamlet were an architectural monument. Hundreds of them 
literally are so, — Monuments Historiques, — protected by the 
Government; but when you undertake to compare them, or to decide 
whether they are more beautiful in Normandy than in the lie de 
France, or in Burgundy, or on the Loire or the Charente, you are lost. 
Even the superiority of the octagon is not evident to every one. Over 
the little church at Fenioux on the Charente, not very far from La 
Rochelle, is a conical steeple that an infidel might adore; and if you 



NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE 49 

have to decide between provinces, you must reckon with the decision 
of architects and amateurs, who seem to be agreed that the first of all 
fleches is at Chartres, the second at Vendome, not far from Blois in 
Touraine, and the third at Auxerre in Burgundy. The towers of 
Coutances are not in the list, nor are those at Bayeux nor those at 
Caen. France is rich in art. Yet the towers of Coutances are in some 
ways as interesting, if not as beautiful, as the best. 

The two stone fleches here, with their octagon faces, do not descend, 
as in other churches, to their resting-place on a square tower, with the 
plan of junction more or less disguised ; they throw out nests of smaller 
fleches, and these cover buttressing corner towers, with lines that go 
directly to the ground. Whether the artist consciously intended it or 
not, the effect is to broaden the facade and lift it into the air. The 
facade itself has a distinctly military look, as though a fortress had 
been altered into a church. A charming arcade at the top has the air 
of being thrown across in order to disguise the alteration, and perhaps 
owes much of its charm to the contrast it makes with the severity of 
military lines. Even the great west window looks like an afterthought ; 
one's instinct asks for a blank wall. Yet, from the ground up to the 
cross on the spire, one feels the Norman nature throughout, animating 
the whole, uniting it all, and crowding into it an intelligent variety of 
original motives that would build a dozen churches of late Gothic. 
Nothing about it is stereotyped or conventional, — not even the con- 
ventionality. 

If you have any doubts about this, you have only to compare the 
photograph of Coutances with the photograph of Chartres; and yet, 
surely, the fagade of Chartres is severe enough to satisfy Saint Bernard 
himself. With the later fronts of Rheims and Amiens, there is no field 
for comparison ; they have next to nothing in common ; yet Coutances 
is said to be of the same date with Rheims, or nearly so, and one can 
believe it when one enters the interior. The Normans, as they slowl}* 
reveal themselves, disclose most unexpected qualities; one seems to 



50 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

sound subterranean caverns of feeling hidden behind their iron nasals. 
No other cathedral in France or in Europe has an interior more re- 
fined — one is tempted to use even the hard-worn adjective, more 
tender — or more carefully studied. One test is crucial here and every- 
where. The treatment of the apse and choir is the architect's severest 
standard. This is a subject not to be touched lightly; one to which we 
shall have to come back in a humble spirit, prepared for patient study, 
at Chartres; but the choir of Coutances is a cousin to that of Chartres, 
as the facades are cousins; Coutances like Chartres belongs to Notre 
Dame and is felt in the same spirit ; the church is built for the choir and 
apse, rather than for the nave and transepts; for the Virgin rather than 
for the public. In one respect Coutances is even more delicate in the 
feminine charm of the Virgin's peculiar grace than Chartres, but this 
was an afterthought of the fourteenth century. The system of chapels 
radiating about the apse was extended down the nave, in an arrange- 
ment "so beautiful and so rare," according to VioUet-le-Duc, that one 
shall seek far before finding its equal. Among the unexpected revela- 
tions of human nature that suddenly astonish historians, one of the 
least reasonable was the passionate outbreak of religious devotion to 
the ideal of feminine grace, charity, and love that took place here in 
Normandy while it was still a part of the English kingdom, and 
flamed up into almost fanatical frenzy among the most hard-hearted 
and hard-headed race in Europe. 

So in this church, in the centre of this arrangement of apse and 
chapels with their quite unusual — perhaps quite singular — grace, 
the four huge piers which support the enormous central tower, offer a 
' tour de force almost as exceptional as the refinement of the chapels. 
At Mont-Saint-Michel, among the monks, the union of strength and 
grace was striking, but at Coutances it is exaggerated, like Tristram 
and Iseult, — a roman of chivalry. The four "enormous" columns of 
the croisee, carry, as Viollet-le-Duc says, the "enormous octagonal 
tower," — like Saint Christopher supporting the Christ-child, before 



NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE 51 

the image of the Virgin, in her honour. Nothing Uke this can be seen 
at Chartres, or at any of the later palaces which France built for the 
pleasure of the Queen of Heaven. 

We are slipping into the thirteenth century again ; the temptation is 
terrible to feeble minds and tourist natures ; but a great mass of twelfth- 
and eleventh-century work remains to be seen and felt. To go back is 
not so easy as to begin with it ; the heavy round arch is like old cognac 
compared with the champagne of the pointed and fretted spire; one 
must not quit Coutances without making an excursion to Lessay on the 
road to Cherbourg, where is a church of the twelfth century, with a 
square tower and almost untouched Norman interior, that closely 
repeats the Abbey Church at Mont-Saint-Michel. "One of the most 
complete models of Romanesque architecture to be found in Nor- 
mandy," says M. de Caumont. The central clocher will begin a pho- 
tographic collection of square towers, to replace that which was lost 
on the Mount; and a second example is near Bayeux, at a small place 
called Cerisy-la-Foret, where the church matches that on the Mount, 
according to M. Corroyer; for Cerisy-la-Foret was also an abbey, and 
the church, built by Richard H, Duke of Normandy, at the beginning 
of the eleventh century, was larger than that on the Mount. It still 
keeps its central tower. 

All this is intensely Norman, and is going to help very little in 
France; it would be more useful in England; but at Bayeux is a great 
cathedral much more to the purpose, with two superb western towers 
crowned by stone fleches, cousins of those at Coutances, and distinctly 
related to the twelfth-century fleche at Chartres. "The Normans," 
says Viollet-le-Duc, "had not that instinct of proportion which the 
architects of the He de France, Beauvais, and Soissons possessed to a 
high degree; yet the boldness of their constructions, their perfect exe- 
cution, the elevation of the fleches, had evident influence on the 
French school properly called, and that influence is felt in the old spire 
of Chartres." The Norman seemed to show distinction in another 



52 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

• 
respect which the French were less quick to imitate. What they began, 

they completed. Not one of the great French churches has two stone 
spires complete, of the same age, while each of the little towns of 
Coutances, Bayeux, and Caen contains its twin towers and fleches of 
stone, as solid and perfect now as they were seven hundred years ago. 
Still another Norman character is worth noting, because this is one 
part of the influence felt at Chartres. If you look carefully at the two 
western towers of the Bayeux Cathedral, perhaps you will feel what is 
said to be the strength of the way they are built up. They rise from 
their foundation with a quiet confidence of line and support, which 
passes directly up to the weather-cock on the summit of the fleches. 
At the plane where the square tower is changed into the octagon spire, 
you will see the corner turrets and the long intermediate windows 
which effect the change without disguising it. One can hardly call 
it a device; it is so simple and evident a piece of construction that 
it does not need to be explained ; yet you will have to carry a photo- 
graph of this fleche to Chartres, and from there to Vendome, for there 
is to be a great battle of fleches about this point of junction, and the 
Norman scheme is a sort of standing reproach to the French. 

Coutances and Bayeux are interesting, but Caen is a Romanesque 
Mecca. There William the Conqueror dealt with the same architec- 
tural problems, and put his solution in his Abbaye-aux-Hommes, 
which bears the name of Saint Stephen. Queen Matilda put her solu- 
tion into her Abbaye-aux-Femmes, the Church of the Trinity. One 
ought particularly to look at the beautiful central clocher of the 
church at Vaucelles in the suburbs ; and one must drive out to Thaon 
to see its eleventh-century church, with a charming Romanesque blind 
arcade on the outside, and a little clocher, "the more interesting to us," 
according to Viollet-le-Duc, "because it bears the stamp of the tradi- 
tions of defence of the primitive towers which were built over the 
porches." Even "a sort of chemin de ronde" remains around the 
clocher, perhaps once provided with a parapet of defence. "C'est Ik, 



NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE 53 

du reste, un charmant edifice." A tower with stone fleche, which actu- 
ally served for defence in a famous recorded instance, is that of the 
church at Secqueville, not far off; this beautiful tower, as charming as 
anything in Norman art, is known to have served as a fortress in 1 105, 
which gives a valuable date. The pretty old Romanesque front of the 
little church at Ouistreham, with its portal that seems to come fresh 
from Poitiers and Moissac, can be taken in, while driving past; but we 
must on no account fail to make a serious pilgrimage to Saint- Pierre- 
sur-Dives, where the church-tower and fleche are not only classed 
among the best in Normandy, but have an exact date, 1145, and a 
very close relation with Chartres, as will appear. Finally, if for no 
other reason, at least for interest in Arlette, the tanner's daughter, one 
must go to Falaise, and look at the superb clocher of Saint-Gervais, 
which was finished and consecrated by 1135. 

Some day, if you like, we can follow this Romanesque style to the 
south, and on even to Italy where it may be supposed to have been 
born ; but France had an architectural life fully a thousand years old 
when these twelfth-century churches were built, and was long since 
artistically, as she was politically, independent. The Normans were 
new in France, but not the Romanesque architecture ; they only took 
the forms and stamped on them their own character. It is the stamp 
we want to distinguish, in order to trace up our lines of artistic ances- 
try. The Norman twelfth-century stamp was not easily effaced. If we 
have not seen enough of it at Mont-Saint-Michel, Coutances, Bayeux, 
and Caen, we can go to Rouen, and drive out to Boscherville, and 
visit the ruined Abbey of Jumieges. Wherever there is a church-tower 
with a tall fleche, as at Boscherville, Secqueville, Saint-Pierre-sur- 
Dives, Caen, and Bayeux, Viollet-le-Duc bids notice how the octag- 
onal steeple is fitted on to the square tower. Always the passage from 
the octagon to the square seems to be quite simply made. The Gothic 
or Romanesque spire had the advantage that a wooden fleche was as 
reasonable a covering for it as a stone one, and the Normans might 



54 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

have Indulged in freaks of form very easily, if they chose, but they 
seem never to have thought of it. The nearest approach to the free- 
dom of wooden roofs is not in the lofty fleches, but in the covering of 
the great square central towers, like Falaise or Vaucelles, a huge four- 
sided roof which tries to be a fleche, and is as massive as the heavy 
structure it covers. 

The last of the Norman towers that VioUet-le-Duc insists upon is 
the so-called Clocher de Saint- Romain, the northern tower on the west 
front of the. Cathedral of Rouen. Unfortunately it has lost its primi- 
tive octagon fleche if it ever had one, but "the tower remains entire, 
and," according to VioUet-le-Duc, "is certainly one of the most beau- 
tiful in this part of France ; it offers a mixture of the two styles of the 
lie de France and of Normandy, in which the former element domin- 
ates"; it is of the same date as the old tower of Chartres (1140-60), 
and follows the same interior arrangement; "but here the petty, con- 
fused disposition of the Norman towers, with their division into 
stories of equal height, has been adopted by the French master 
builder, although in submitting to these local customs he has still 
thrown over his work the grace and finesse, the study of detail, the 
sobriety in projections, the perfect harmony between the profiles, 
sculpture, and the general effect of the whole, which belong to the 
school he came from. He has managed his voids and solids with 
especial cleverness, giving the more importance to the voids, and 
enlarging the scale of his details, as the tower rose in height. These 
details have great beauty; the construction is executed in materials of 
small dimensions with the care that the twelfth-century architects put 
into their building; the profiles project little, and, in spite of their 
extreme finesse, produce much effect; the buttresses are skilfully 
planted and profiled. The staircase, which, on the east side, deranges 
the arrangement of the bays, is a chef-d'oeuvre of architecture." This 
long panegyric, by Viollet-le-Duc, on French taste at the expense of 
Norman temper, ought to be read, book in hand, before the Cathedral 



NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE 55 

of Rouen, with photographs of Bayeux to compare. Certain it Is that 
the Normans and the French never talked quite the same language, but 
it is equally certain that the Norman language, to the English ear, 
expressed itself quite as clearly as the French, and sometimes seemed 
to have more to express. 

The complaint of the French artist against the Norman is the 
"mesquin" treatment of dividing his tower into storeys of equal 
height. Even in the twelfth century and in religious architecture, 
artists already struggled over the best solution of this particularly 
American problem of the twentieth century, and when tourists return 
to New York, they may look at the twenty-storey towers which deco- 
rate the city, to see whether the Norman or the French plan has won ; 
but this, at least, will be sure in advance: — the Norman will be the 
practical scheme which states the facts, and stops; while the French 
will be the graceful one, which states the beauties, and more or less 
fits the facts to suit them. Both styles are great : both can sometimes 
be tiresome. 

Here we must take leave of Normandy; a small place, but one 
which, like Attica or Tuscany, has said a great deal to the world, and 
even goes on saying things — not often In the famous genre ennuyeux 
— to this day; for Gustave Flaubert's style is singularly like that of 
the Tour Saint-Romain and the Abbaye-aux-Hommes. Going up the 
Seine one might read a few pages of his letters, or of '* Madame de 
Bovary," to see how an old art transmutes itself into a new one, with- 
out changing Its methods. Some critics have thought that at times 
Flaubert was mesquin like the Norman tower, but these are, as the 
French say, the defects of his qualities; we can pass over them, and 
let our eyes rest on the simplicity of the Norman fleche which pierces 
the line of our horizon. 

The last of Norman art is seen at Mantes, where there is a little 
church of Gasslcourt that marks the farthest reach of the style. In 
arms as in architecture. Mantes barred the path of Norman conquest; 



56 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

William the Conqueror met his death here in 1087. Geographically 
Mantes is in the lie de France, less than forty miles from Paris. 
Architecturally, it is Paris itself; while, forty miles to the southward, 
is Chartres, an independent or only feudally dependent country. No 
matter how hurried the architectural tourist may be, the boundary- 
line of the lie de France is not to be crossed without stopping. If he 
came down from the north or east, he would have equally to stop, — • 
either at Beauvais, or at Laon, or Noyon, or Soissons, — because there 
is an architectural douane to pass, and one's architectural baggage 
must be opened. Neither Notre Dame de Paris nor Notre Dame de 
Chartres is quite intelligible unless one has first seen Notre Dame de 
Mantes, and studied it in the sacred sources of M. Viollet-le-Duc. 

Notre Dame de Mantes is a sister to the Cathedral of Paris, "built 
at the same time, perhaps by the same architect, and reproducing its 
general dispositions, its mode of structure, and some of its details"; 
but the Cathedral of Paris has been greatly altered, so that its original 
arrangement is quite changed, while the church at Mantes remains 
practically as it was, when both were new, about the year 1200. As 
nearly as the dates can be guessed, the cathedral was finished, up to 
its vaulting, in 1170, and was soon afterwards imitated on a smaller 
scale at Mantes. The scheme seems to have been unsatisfactory 
because of defects in the lighting, for the whole system of fenestration 
had been changed at Paris before 1230, naturally at great cost, since 
the alterations, according to Viollet-le-Duc (articles "Cathedral" and 
" Rose," and allusions "Triforium"), left little except the ground-plan 
unchanged. To understand the Paris design of 1160-70, which was a 
long advance from the older plans, one must come to Mantes; and, 
reflecting that the great triumph of Chartres was its fenestration, 
which must have been designed immediately after 1 195, one can under- 
stand how, in this triangle of churches only forty or fifty miles apart, 
the architects, watching each other's experiments, were influenced, 
almost from day to day, by the failures or successes which they saw. 



NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE 57 

The fenestration which the Paris architect planned in 1160-70, and 
repeated at Mantes, 1 190-1200, was wholly abandoned, and a new 
system introduced, immediately after the success of Chartres in 12 10. 

As they now stand, Mantes is the oldest. While conscientiously 
trying to keep as far away as we can from technique, about which we 
know nothing and should care if possible still less if only ignorance 
would help us to feel what we do not understand, still the conscience 
is happier if it gains a little conviction, founded on what it thinks a 
fact. Even theologians — even the great theologians of the thirteenth 
century — even Saint Thomas Aquinas himself — did not trust to 
faith alone, or assume the existence of God ; and what Saint Thomas 
found necessary in philosophy may also be a sure source of consolation 
in the difficulties of art. The church at Mantes is a very early fact in 
Gothic art; indeed, it is one of the earliest; for our purposes it will 
serve as the very earliest of pure Gothic churches, after the Transition, 
and this we are told to study in its windows. 

Before one can get near enough fairly to mark the details of the 
fagade, one sees the great rose window which fills a space nearly 
twenty-seven feet in width. Gothic fanatics commonly reckon the 
great rose windows of the thirteenth century as the most beautiful 
creation of their art, among the details of ornament; and this particu- 
lar rose is the direct parent of that at Chartres, which is classic like 
the Parthenon, while both of them served as models or guides for that 
at Paris which dates from 1220, those in the north and south transepts 
at Rheims, about 1230, and so on, from parent to child, till the rose 
faded forever. No doubt there were Romanesque roses before 1200, 
and we shall see them, but this rose of Mantes is the first Gothic rose 
of great dimensions, and that from which the others grew ; in its sim- 
plicity, its honesty, its large liberality of plan, it is also one of the best, 
if M. Viollet-le-Duc is a true guide; but you will see a hundred roses, 
first or last, and can choose as you would among the flowers. 

More interesting than even the great rose of the portal is the remark 



58 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

that the same rose-motive is carried round the church throughout its 
entire system of fenestration. As one follows it, on the outside, one 
sees that all the windows are constructed on the same rose-scheme ; but 
the most curious arrangement is in the choir inside the church. You 
look up to each of the windows through a sort of tunnel or telescope: 
an arch enlarging outwards, the roses at the end resembling "oeil-de- 
boeufs," "oculi." So curious is this arrangement that Viollet-le-Duc 
has shown it, under the head "Triforium," in drawings and sections 
which any one can study who likes; its interest to us is that this 
arrangement in the choir was probably the experiment which proved 
a failure in Notre Dame at Paris, and led to the tearing-out the old 
windows and substituting those which still stand. Perhaps the rose 
did not give enough light, although the church at Mantes seems well 
lighted, and even at Paris the rose windows remain in the transepts 
and in one bay of the nave. 

All this is introduction to the windows of Chartres, but these three 
churches open another conundrum as one learns, bit by bit, a few of 
the questions to be asked of the forgotten Middle Ages. The church- 
towers at Mantes are very interesting, inside and out; they are evi- 
dently studied with love and labour by their designer; yet they have 
no fleches. How happens it that Notre Dame at Paris also has no 
fleches, although the towers, according to Viollet-le-Duc, are finished 
in full preparation for them? This double omission on the part of the 
French architect seems exceedingly strange, because his rival at 
Chartres finished his fleche just when the architect of Paris and 
Mantes was finishing his towers (i 175-1200). The Frenchman was 
certainly consumed by jealousy at the triumph never attained on any- 
thing like the same scale by any architect of the lie de France; and he 
was actually engaged at the time on at least two fleches, close to Paris, 
one at Saint-Denis, another of Saint-Leu-d'Esserent, which proved 
the active interest he took in the difficulties conquered at Chartres, 
and his perfect competence to deal with them. 




CAEN: THE "ABBAYE AUX DAMES" 



NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE 59 

Indeed, one is tempted to say that these twin churches, Paris and 
Mantes, are the only French churches of the time (1200) which were 
left without a fleche. As we go from Mantes to Paris, we pass, about 
half-way, at Poissy, under the towers of a very ancient and interesting 
church which has the additional merit of having witnessed the bap- 
tism of Saint Louis in 1215. Parts of the church at Poissy go back to 
the seventh and ninth centuries. The square base of the tower dates 
back before the time of Hugh Capet, to the Carolingian age, and 
belongs, like the square tower of Saint-Germain-des-Pres at Paris, to 
the old defensive military architecture ; but it has a later, stone fleche 
and it has, too, by exception a central octagonal clocher, with a timber 
fleche which dates from near 1 100. Paris itself has not much to show, 
but in the immediate neighbourhood are a score of early churches 
with charming fleches, and at Etampes, about thirty-five miles to the 
south, is an extremely interesting church with an exquisite fleche, 
which may claim an afternoon to visit. That at Saint-Leu-d'Esserent 
is a still easier excursion, for one need only drive over from Chant illy 
a couple of miles. The fascinating old Abbey Church of Saint-Leu 
looks down over the valley of the Oise, and is a sort of antechamber to 
Chartres, as far as concerns architecture. Its fleche, built towards 
1 1 60, — when that at Chartres was rising, — is unlike any other, and 
shows how much the French architects valued their lovely French 
creation. On its octagonal faces, it carries upright batons, or lances, 
as a device for relieving the severity of the outlines; a device both 
intelligent and amusing, though it was never imitated. A little farther 
from Paris, at Senlis, is another fleche, which shows still more plainly 
the effort of the French architects to vary and elaborate the Chartres 
scheme. As for Laon, which is interesting throughout, and altogether 
the most delightful building in the lie de France, the fleches are gone, 
but the towers are there, and you will have to study them, before study- 
ing those at Chartres, with all the intelligence you have to spare. They 
were the chef-d'oeuvre of the mediaeval architect, in his own opinion. 



6o MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

All this makes the absence of fleches at Paris and Mantes the more 
strange. Want of money was certainly not the cause, since the Paris- 
ians had money enough to pull their whole cathedral to pieces at the 
very time when fleches were rising in half the towns within sight of 
them. Possibly they were too ambitious, and could find no design that 
seemed to satisfy their ambition. They took pride in their cathedral, 
and they tried hard to make their shrine of Our Lady rival the great 
shrine at Chartres. Of course, one must study their beautiful church, 
but this can be done at leisure, for, as it stands, it is later than 
Chartres and more conventional. Saint-Germain-des-Pres leads more 
directly to Chartres ; but perhaps the church most useful to know is no 
longer a church at all, but a part of the Museum of Arts et Metiers, — 
the desecrated Saint-Martin-des-Champs, a name which shows that 
it dates from a time when the present Porte-Saint- Martin was far out 
among fields. The choir of Saint-Martin, which is all that needs noting, 
is said by M. Enlart to date from about 1150. Hidden in a remnant 
of old Paris near the Pont Notre Dame, where the student life of the 
Middle Ages was to be most turbulent and the Latin Quarter most 
renowned, is the little church of Saint- Julien-le-Pauvre, towards 11 70. 
On the whole, further search in Paris would not greatly help us. If one 
is to pursue the early centuries, one must go farther afield, for the 
schools of Normandy and the lie de France were only two among half 
a dozen which flourished in the various provinces that were to be 
united in the kingdom of Saint Louis and his successors. We have not 
even looked to the south and east, whence the impulse came. The old 
Carolingian school, with its centre at Aix-la-Chapelle, is quite beyond 
our horizon. The Rhine had a great Romanesque architecture of its 
own. One broad architectural tide swept up the Rhone and filled the 
Burgundian provinces as far as the watershed of the Seine. Another 
lined the Mediterranean, with a centre at Aries. Another spread up 
the western rivers, the Charente and the Loire, reaching to Le Mans 
and touching Chartres. Two more lay in the centre of France, spread- 



NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE 6i 

ing from Perigord and Clermont in Auvergne. All these schools had 
individual character, and all have charm; but we have set out to go 
from Mont-Saint-Michel to Chartres in three centuries, the eleventh, 
twelfth, and thirteenth, trying to get, on the way, not technical knowl- 
edge; not accurate information; not correct views either on history, 
art, or religion; not anything that can possibly be useful or instructive; 
but only a sense of what those centuries had to say, and a sympathy 
with their ways of saying it. Let us go straight to Chartres! 



CHAPTER V 

TOWERS AND PORTALS 

FOR a first visit to Chartres, choose some pleasant morning when 
the lights are soft, for one wants to be welcome, and the cathe- 
dral has moods, at times severe. At best, the Beauce is a country none 
too gay. 

The first glimpse that is caught, and the first that was meant to be 
caught, is that of the two spires. With all the education that Nor- 
mandy and the He de France can give, one is still ignorant. The spire 
is the simplest part of the Romanesque or Gothic architecture, and 
needs least study in order to be felt. It is a bit of sentiment almost pure 
of practical purpose. It tells the whole of its story at a glance, and its 
story is the best that architecture had to tell, for it typified the aspira- 
tions of man at the moment when man's aspirations were highest. Yet 
nine persons out of ten — perhaps ninety-nine in a hundred — who 
come within sight of the two spires of Chartres will think it a jest if 
they are told that the smaller of the two, the simpler, the one that 
impresses them least, is the one which they are expected to recognize 
as the most perfect piece of architecture in the world. Perhaps the 
French critics might deny that they make any such absolute claim; 
in that case you can ask them what their exact claim is; it will always 
be high enough to astonish the tourist. 

Astonished or not, we have got to take this southern spire of the 
Chartres Cathedral as the object of serious study, and before taking it 
as art, must take it as history. The foundations of this tower — 
always to be known as the "old tower" — are supposed to have been 
laid in 109 1, before the first crusade. The fleche was probably half a 
century later (1145-70). The foundations of the new tower, opposite, 
were laid not before mo, when also the portal which stands between 




CHARTRES CATHEDRAL 



TOWERS AND PORTALS 63 

them, was begun with the three lancet windows above it, but not the 
rose. For convenience, this old fagade — including the portal and the 
two towers, but not the fleches, and the three lancet windows, but not 
the rose — may be dated as complete about 11 50. 

Originally the whole portal — the three doors and the three lancets 
— stood nearly forty feet back, on the line of the interior foundation, 
or rear wall of the towers. This arrangement threw the towers forward, 
free on three sides, as at Poitiers, and gave room for a parvis, before 
the portal, — a porch, roofed over, to protect the pilgrims who always 
stopped there to pray before entering the church. When the church 
was rebuilt after the great fire of 11 94, and the architect was required 
to enlarge the interior, the old portal and lancets were moved bodily 
forward, to be flush with the front walls of the two towers, as you see 
the fagade to-day; and the fagade itself was heightened, to give room 
for the rose, and to cover the loftier pignon and vaulting behind. 
Finally, the wooden roof, above the stone vault, was masked by the 
Arcade of Kings and its railing, completed in the taste of Philip the 
Hardy, who reigned from 1270 to 1285. 

These changes have, of course, altered the values of all the parts. 
The portal is injured by being thrown into a glare of light, when it 
was intended to stand in shadow, as you will see in the north and south 
porches over the transept portals. The towers are hurt by losing relief 
and shadow; but the old fleche is obliged to suffer the cruellest wrong 
of all by having its right shoulder hunched up by half of a huge rose 
and the whole of a row of kings, when it was built to stand free, and to 
soar above the whole f agade from the top of its second storey. One can 
easily figure it so and replace the lost parts of the old fagade, more or 
less at haphazard, from the front of Noyon. 

What an outrage it was you can see by a single glance at the new 
fleche opposite. The architect of 1500 has flatly refused to submit to 
such conditions, and has insisted, with very proper self-respect, on 
starting from the balustrade of the Arcade of Kings as his level. Not 



64 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

even content with that, he has carried up his square tower another lofty 
storey before he would consent to touch the heart of his problem, the 
conversion of the square tower into the octagon fleche. In doing this, 
he has sacrificed once more the old fleche; but his own tower stands free 
as it should. 

At Vendome, when you go there, you will be in a way to appreciate 
still better what happened to the Chartres fleche; for the clocher at 
Vendome, which is of the same date, — Viollet-le-Duc says earHer, 
and Enlart, "after 1 130, " — stood and still stands free, like an Italian 
campanile, which gives it a vast advantage. The tower of Saint-Leu- 
d'Esserent, also after 1130, stands free, above the second storey. 
Indeed, you will hardly find, in the long list of famous French spires, 
another which has been treated with so much indignity as this, the 
greatest and most famous of all ; and perhaps the most annoying part 
of itjs that you must be grateful to the architect of 1195 for doing no 
worse. He has, on the contrary, done his best to show respect for the 
work of his predecessor, and has done so well that, handicapped as it is, 
the old tower still defies rivalry. Nearly* three hundred and fifty feet 
high, or, to be exact, 106.5 rnetres from the church floor, it is built up 
with an amount of inteUigence and refinement that leaves to unpro- 
fessional visitors no chance to think a criticism — much less to express 
one. Perhaps — when we have seen more — and feel less — ^who 
knows? — but certainly not now! 

"The greatest and surely the most beautiful monument of this 
kind that we possess in France," says Viollet-le-Duc; but although 
an ignorant spectator must accept the architect's decision on a point 
of relative merit, no one is compelled to accept his reasons, as final. 
"There is no need to dwell," he continues, "upon the beauty and the 
grandeur of composition in which the artist has given proof of rare 
sobriety, where all the effects are obtained, not by ornaments, but by 
the just and skilful proportion of the different parts. The transition, so 
hard to adjust, between the square base and the octagon of the fleche, 



TOWERS AND PORTALS 65 

is managed and carried out with an address which has not been sur- 
passed in similar monuments." One stumbles a little at the word 
"adresse." One never caught one's self using the word in Norman 
churches. Your photographs of Bayeux or Boscherville or Secque- 
ville will show you at a glance whether the term "adresse" applies 
to them. Even Vendome would rather be praised for '' droiture" than 
for "adresse." — Whether the word "adresse" means cleverness, dex- 
terity, adroitness, or simple technical skill, the thing itself is some- 
thing which the French have always admired more than the Normans 
ever did. Viollet-le-Duc himself seems to be a little uncertain whether 
to lay most stress on the one or the other quality: "If one tries to 
appreciate the conception of this tower," quotes the Abbe Bulteau 
(11, 84), "one will see that it is as frank as the execution is simple 
and skilful. Starting from the bottom, one reaches the summit of the 
fleche without marked break; without anything to interrupt the gen- 
eral form of the building. This clocher, whose base is broad (pleine), 
massive, and free from ornament, transforms itself, as it springs, into 
a sharp spire with eight faces,* without its being possible to say where 
the massive construction ends and the light construction begins." 

Granting, as one must, that this concealment of the transition is a 
beauty, one would still like to be quite sure that the Chartres scheme is 
the best. The Norman clochers being thrown out, and that at Ven- 
dome being admittedly simple, the Clocher de Saint- Jean on the 
Church of Saint-Germain at Auxerre seems to be thought among the 
next in importance, although it is only about one hundred and sixty 
feet in height (forty-nine metres), and therefore hardly in the same 
class with Chartres. Any photograph shows that the Auxerre spire is 
also simple; and that at Etampes you have seen already to be of the 
Vend6me rather than of the Chartres type. The clocher at Senlis is 
more "habile"; it shows an effort to be clever, and offers a standard 
of comparison ; but the mediaeval architects seem to have thought that 
none of them bore rivalry with Laon for technical skill. One of these 



66 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

professional experts, named Villard de Honnecourt, who lived between 
1200 and 1250, left a notebook which you can see in the vitrines of the 
Bibliotheque Nationale in the Rue Richelieu, and which is the source 
of most that is known about the practical ideas of mediaeval architects. 
He came to Chartres, and, standing here before the doors, where we 
are standing, he made a rough drawing, not of the tower, but of the 
rose, which was then probably new, since it must have been planned 
between 1195 and 1200. Apparently the tower did not impress him 
strongly, for he made no note of it; but on the other hand, when he 
went to Laon, he became vehement in praise of the cathedral tower 
there, which must have been then quite new: "I have been in many 
countries, as you can find in this book. In no place have I ever such a 
tower seen as that of Laon. — J'ai este en mult de tieres, si cum vus 
pores trover en cest livre. En aucun liu onques tel tor ne vi com est 
cele de Loon." The reason for this admiration is the same that Viollet- 
le-Duc gives for admiring the tower of Chartres — the " adresse" with 
which the square is changed into the octagon. Not only is the tower 
itself changed into the fleche without visible junction, under cover of 
four corner tourelles, of open work, on slender columns, which start as 
squares ; but the tourelles also convert themselves into octagons in the 
very act of rising, and end in octagon fleches that carry up — or once 
carried up — the lines of profile to the central fleche that soared above 
them. Clearly this device far surpassed in cleverness the scheme of 
Chartres, which was comparatively heavy and structural, the weights 
being adjusted for their intended work, while the transformation at 
Laon takes place in the air, and challenges discovery in defiance of 
one's keenest eyesight. "Regard . . . how the tourelles pass from one 
disposition to another, in rising! Meditate on it!" 

The fleche of Laon is gone, but the tower and tourelles are still there 
to show what the architects of the thirteenth century thought their 
most brilliant achievement. One cannot compare Chartres directly 
with any of its contemporary rivals, but one can at least compare the 



TOWERS AND PORTALS 67 

old spire with the new one which stands opposite and rises above it. 
Perhaps you will like the new best. Built at a time which is commonly 
agreed to have had the highest standard of taste, it does not encourage 
tourist or artist to insist on setting up standards of his own against it. 
Begun in 1507, it was finished in 151 7. The dome of Saint Peter's at 
Rome, over which Bramante and Raphael and Michael Angelo toiled, 
was building at the same time; Leonardo da Vinci was working at 
Amboise; Jean Bullant, Pierre Lescot, and their patron, Francis I, 
were beginning their architectural careers. Four hundred years, or 
thereabouts, separated the old spire from the new one; and four hun- 
dred more separate the new one from us. If Viollet-le-Duc, who him- 
self built Gothic spires, had cared to compare his fleches at Clermont- 
Ferrand with the new fleche at Chartres, he might perhaps have given 
us a rule where "adresse" ceases to have charm, and where detail 
becomes tiresome ; but in the want of a schoolmaster to lay down a law 
of taste, you can admire the new fleche as much as you please. Of 
course, one sees that the lines of the new tower are not clean, like those 
of the old ; the devices that cover the transition from the square to the 
octagon are rather too obvious; the proportion of the fleche to the tower 
quite alters the values of the parts ; a rigid classical taste might even go 
so far as to hint that the new tower, in comparison with the old, showed 
signs of a certain tendency toward a dim and distant vulgarity. There 
can be no harm in admitting that the new tower is a little wanting in 
repose for a tower whose business is to counterpoise the very classic 
lines of the old one ; but no law compels you to insist on absolute repose 
in any form of art; if such a law existed, it would have to deal with 
Michael Angelo before it dealt with us. The new tower has many 
faults, but it has great beauties, as you can prove by comparing it with 
other late Gothic spires, including those of Viollet-le-Duc. Its chief 
fault is to be where it is. As a companion to the crusades and to Saint 
Bernard, it lacks austerity. As a companion to the Virgin of Chartres, 
it recalls Diane de Poitiers. 



68 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

In fact, the new tower, which in years is four centuries younger than 
its neighbour, is in feeling fully four hundred years older. It is self- 
conscious if not vain ; its coiffure is elaborately arranged to cover the 
effects of age, and its neck and shoulders are covered with lace and 
jewels to hide a certain sharpness of skeleton. Yet it may be beautiful, 
still; the poets derided the wrinkles of Diane de Poitiers at the very 
moment when King Henry II idealized her with the homage of a Don 
Quixote ; an atmosphere of physical beauty and decay hangs about the 
whole Renaissance. 

One cannot push these resemblances too far, even for the twelfth 
century and the old tower. Exactly what date the old tower repre- 
sents, as a social symbol, is a question that might be as much disputed 
as the beauty of Diane de Poitiers, and yet half the interest of archi- 
tecture consists in the sincerity of its reflection of the society that 
builds. In mere time, by actual date, the old tower represents the 
second crusade, and when, in 1150, Saint Bernard was elected chief of 
that crusade in this very cathedral, — or rather, in the cathedral of 
1 120, which was burned, — the workmen were probably setting in mor- 
tar the stones of the fleche as we now see them ; yet the fleche does not 
represent Saint Bernard in feeling, for Saint Bernard held the whole 
array of church-towers in horror as signs merely of display, wealth 
and pride. The fleche rather represents Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis, 
Abbot Peter the Venerable of Cluny, Abbot Abelard of Saint-Gildas-de- 
Rhuys, and Queen Eleanor of Guienne, who had married Louis-Ie- 
Jeune in 1 137; who had taken the cross from Saint Bernard in 1147; 
who returned from the Holy Land in 1149; and who compelled Saint 
Bernard to approve her divorce in 1152. Eleanor and Saint Bernard 
were centuries apart, yet they lived at the same time and in the same 
church. Speaking exactly, the old tower represents neither of them; 
the new tower itself is hardly more florid than Eleanor was; perhaps 
less so, if one can judge from the fashions of the court-dress of her 
time. The old tower is almost Norman, while Eleanor was wholly 



TOWERS AND PORTALS 69 

Gascon, and Gascony was always florid without being always correct. 
The new tower, if it had been built in 1150, like the old one, would 
have expressed Eleanor perfectly, even in height and apparent effort 
to dwarf its mate, except that Eleanor dwarfed her husband without 
an effort, and both in art and in history the result lacked harmony. 

Be the contrast what it may, it does not affect the fact that no other 
church in France has two spires that need be discussed in comparison 
with these. Indeed, no other cathedral of the same class has any spires 
at all, and this superiority of Chartres gave most of its point to a 
saying that "with the spires of Chartres, the choir of Beauvais, the 
nave of Amiens, and the fagade of Rheims," one could make a perfect 
church — for us tourists. 

The towers have taken much time, though they are the least 
religious and least complicated part of church architecture, and in no 
way essential to the church; indeed. Saint Bernard thought them an 
excrescence due to pride and worldliness, and this is merely Saint 
Bernard's way of saying that they were an ornament created to 
gratify the artistic sense of beauty. Beautiful as they are, one's eyes 
must drop at last down to the church itself. If the spire symbolizes 
aspiration, the door symbolizes the way ; and the portal of Chartres is 
the type of French doors; it stands first in the history of Gothic art; 
and, in the opinion of most Gothic artists, first in the interest of all 
art, though this is no concern of ours. Here is the Way to Eternal Life 
as it was seen by the Church and the Art of the first crusade! 

The fortune of this monument has been the best attested Miracle 
de la Vierge in the long list of the Virgin's miracles, for it comes down, 
practically unharmed, through what may with literal accuracy be 
called the jaws of destruction and the flames of hell. Built some time 
in the first half of the twelfth century, it passed, apparently un- 
scathed, through the great fire of 11 94 which burnt out the church 
behind, and even the timber interior of the towers in front of it. 
Owing to the enormous mass of timber employed in the structure of 



70 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

the great churches, these recurrent fires were as destructive as fire can 
be made, yet not only the portals with their statuary and carving, but 
also the lancet windows with their glass, escaped the flames; and, 
what is almost equally strange, escaped also the hand of the builder 
afterwards, who, if he had resembled other architects, would have 
made a new front of his own, but who, with piety unexampled, 
tenderly took the old stones down, one by one, and replaced them 
forty feet in advance of their old position. The English wars and the 
wars of religion brought new dangers, sieges, and miseries; the revolu- 
tion of 1792 brought actual rapine and waste; boys have flung stones 
at the saints ; architects have wreaked their taste within and without ; 
fire after fire has calcined the church vaults; the worst wrecker of all, 
the restorer of the nineteenth century, has prowled about it; yet the 
porch still stands, mutilated but not restored, burned but not con- 
sumed, as eloquent a witness to the power and perfections of Our 
Lady as it was seven hundred years ago, and perhaps more impressive. 

You will see portals and porches more or less of the same period 
elsewhere in many different places, — at Paris, Le Mans, Sens, Autun, 
Vezelay, Clermont-Ferrand, Moissac, Aries, — a score of them; for the 
same piety has protected them more than once; but you will see no 
other so complete or so instructive, and you may search far before you 
will find another equally good in workmanship. Study of the Chartres 
portal covers all the rest. The feeling and motive of all are nearly the 
same, or vary only to suit the character of the patron saint ; and the 
point of all is that this feeling is the architectural child of the first 
crusade. At Chartres one can read the first crusade in the portal, as at 
Mont-Saint- Michel in the Aquilon and the promenoir. 

The Abbe Bulteau gives reason for assuming the year 11 17 as the 
approximate date of the sculpture about the west portal, and you saw 
at Mont-Saint- Michel, in the promenoir of Abbot Roger II, an 
accurately dated work of the same decade ; but whatever the date of 
the plan, the actual work and its spirit belong to 1145 or thereabouts. 




CHARTRES: DETAIL OF WEST PORTAL 



TOWERS AND PORTALS 71 

Some fifty years had passed since the crusaders streamed through 
Constantinople to Antioch and Jerusalem, and they were daily going 
and returning. You can see the ideas they brought back with the relics 
and missals and enamels they bought in Byzantium. Over the central 
door is the Christ, which might be sculptured after a Byzantine 
enamel, with its long nimbus or aureole or glory enclosing the whole 
figure. Over the left door is an Ascension, bearing the same stamp; and 
over the right door, the seated Virgin, with her crown and her two 
attendant archangels, is an empress. Here is the Church, the Way, and 
the Life of the twelfth century that we have undertaken to feel, if not 
to understand! 

First comes the central doorway, and above it is the glory of Christ, 
as the church at Chartres understood Christ in the year 11 50; for the 
glories of Christ were many, and the Chartres Christ is one. Whatever 
Christ may have been in other churches, here, on this portal, he offers 
himself to his flock as the herald of salvation alone. Among all the 
imagery of these three doorways, there is no hint of fear, punish- 
ment, or damnation, and this is the note of the whole time. Before 
1200, the Church seems not to have felt the need of appealing hab- 
itually to terror ; the promise of hope and happiness was enough ; 
even the portal at Autun, which displays a Last Judgment, belonged 
to Saint Lazarus the proof and symbol of resurrection. A hundred 
years later, every church portal showed Christ not as Saviour but as 
Judge, and He presided over a Last Judgment at Bourges and Amiens, 
and here on the south portal, where the despair of the damned is the 
evident joy of the artist, if it is not even sometimes a little his jest, 
which is worse. At Chartres Christ is identified with His Mother, the 
spirit of love and grace, and His Church is the Church Triumphant. 

Not only is fear absent ; there is not even a suggestion of pain ; there 
is not a martyr with the symbol of his martyrdom ; and what is still 
more striking, in the sculptured life of Christ, from the Nativity to the 
Ascension, which adorns the capitals of the columns, the single scene 



^2 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

that has been omitted is the Crucifixion. There, as everywhere in this 
portal, the artists seem actually to have gone out of their way in order 
to avoid a suggestion of suffering. They have pictured Christ and His 
Mother in all the other events of their lives; they have represented 
evangelists; apostles; the twenty-four old men of the Apocalypse; 
saints, prophets, kings, queens, and princes, by the score; the signs of 
the zodiac, and even the seven liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, dia- 
lectics, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music; everything is 
there except misery. 

Perhaps Our Lady of Chartres was known to be peculiarly gracious 
and gentle, and this may partially account also for the extreme popu- 
larity of her shrine; but whatever the reason, her church was clearly 
intended to show only this side of her nature, and to impress it on her 
Son. You can see it in the grave and gracious face and attitude of the 
Christ, raising His hand to bless you as you enter His kingdom ; in the 
array of long figures which line the entrance to greet you as you pass ; 
in the expression of majesty and mercy of the Virgin herself on her 
throne above the southern doorway; never once are you regarded as a 
possible rebel, or traitor, or a stranger to be treated with suspicion, or 
as a child to be impressed by fear. 

Equally distinct, perhaps even more emphatic, is the sculptor's 
earnestness to make you feel, without direct insistence, that you are 
entering the Court of the Queen of Heaven who is one with her Son 
and His Church. The central door always bore the name of the " Royal 
Door," because it belonged to the celestial majesty of Christ, and 
naturally bears the stamp of royalty; but the south door belongs to the 
Virgin and to us. Stop a moment to see how she receives us, remem- 
bering, or trying to remember, that to the priests and artists who 
designed the portal, and to the generations that went on the first and 
second crusades, the Virgin in her shrine was at least as living, as real, 
as personal an empress as the Basilissa at Constantinople! 

On the lintel immediately above the doorway is a succession of small 



TOWERS AND PORTALS 73 

groups : first, the Annunciation ; Mary stands to receive the Archangel 
Gabriel, who comes to announce to her that she is chosen to be the 
Mother of God. The second is the Visitation, and in this scene also 
Mary stands, but she already wears a crown ; at least, the Abbe Bul- 
teau says so, although time has dealt harshly with it. Then, in the 
centre, follows the Nativity; Mary lies on a low bed, beneath, or before, 
a sort of table or cradle on which lies the Infant, while Saint Joseph 
stands at the bed's head. Then the angel appears, directing three 
shepherds to the spot, filling the rest of the space. 

In correct theology, the Virgin ought not to be represented in bed, 
for she could not suffer like ordinary women, but her palace at Chartres 
is not much troubled by theology, and to her, as empress-mother, 
the pain of child-birth was a pleasure which she wanted her people to 
share. The Virgin of Chartres was the greatest of all queens, but 
the most womanly of women, as we shall see; and her double character 
is sustained throughout her palace. She was also intellectually gifted 
in the highest degree. In the upper zone you see her again, at the 
Presentation in the Temple, supporting the Child Jesus on the altar, 
while Simeon aids. Other figures bring offerings. The voussures of 
the arch above contain six archangels, with curious wings, offering wor- 
ship to the Infant and His Imperial Mother. Below are the signs of the 
zodiac ; the Fishes and the Twins. The rest of the arch is filled by the 
seven liberal arts, with Pythagoras, Aristotle, Cicero, Euclid, Nico- 
machus, Ptolemy, and Priscian as their representatives, testifying to 
the Queen's intellectual superiority. 

In the centre sits Mary, with her crown on her head and her Son in 
her lap, enthroned, receiving the homage of heaven and earth; of all 
time, ancient and modern; of all thought, Christian and Pagan; of all 
men, and all women; including, if you please, your homage and mine, 
which she receives without question, as her due; which she cannot be 
said to claim, because she is above making claims; she is empress. 
Her left hand bore a sceptre; her right supported the Child, Who looks 



74 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

directly forward, repeating the Mother's attitude, and raises His right 
hand to bless, while His left rests on the orb of empire. She and her 
Child are one. 

All this was noble beyond the nobility of man, but its earthly form 
was inspired by the Empire rather than by the petty royalty of Louis- 
le-Gros or his pious queen Alix of Savoy. One mark of the period is the 
long, oval nimbus; another is the imperial character of the Virgin; a 
third is her unity with the Christ which is the Church. To us, the 
mark that will distinguish the Virgin of Chartres, or, if you prefer, the 
Virgin of the Crusades, is her crown and robes and throne. According 
to M. Rohault de Fleury's " Iconographie de la Sainte Vierge" (ii, 62), 
the Virgin's headdress and ornaments had been for long ages borrowed 
from the costume of the Empresses of the East in honour of the Queen 
of Heaven. No doubt the Virgin of Chartres was the Virgin recog- 
nized by the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine, and was at least 
as old as Helena's pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 326. She was not a West- 
ern, feudal queen, nor was her Son a feudal king; she typified an author- 
ity which the people wanted, and the fiefs feared; the Pax Romana; the 
omnipotence of God in government. In all Europe, at that time, there 
was no power able to enforce justice or to maintain order, and no sym- 
bol of such a power except Christ and His Mother and the Imperial 
Crown. 

This idea is very different from that which was the object of our 
pilgrimage to Mont-Saint- Michel; but since all Chartres is to be one 
long comment upon it, you can lay the history of the matter on the 
shelf for study at your leisure, if you ever care to study into the weary 
details of human illusions and disappointments, while here we pray to 
the Virgin, and absorb ourselves in the art, which is your pleasure and 
which shall not teach either a moral or a useful lesson. The Empress 
Mary is receiving you at her portal, and whether you are an imperti- 
nent child, or a foolish old peasant- woman, or an insolent prince, or a 
more insolent tourist, she receives you with the same dignity; in fact, 



TOWERS AND PORTALS 75 

she probably sees very little difference between you. An empress of 
Russia to-day would probably feel little difference in the relative rank 
of her subjects, and the Virgin was empress over emperors, patriarchs, 
and popes. Any one, however ignorant, can feel the sustained dignity 
of the sculptor's work, which is asserted with all the emphasis he could 
put into it. Not one of these long figures which line the three doorways 
but is an officer or official in attendance on the Empress or her Son, 
and bears the stamp of the Imperial Court. They are mutilated, but, 
if they have been treated with indignity, so were often their temporal 
rivals, torn to pieces, trampled on, to say nothing of being merely 
beheaded or poisoned, in the Sacred Palace and the Hippodrome, with- 
out losing that peculiar Oriental dignity of style which seems to drape 
the least dignified attitudes. The grand air of the twelfth century is 
something like that of a Greek temple; you can, if you like, hammer 
every separate stone to pieces, but you cannot hammer out the Greek 
style. There were originally twenty-four of these statues, and nineteen 
remain. Beginning at the north end, and passing over the first figure, 
which carries a head that does not belong to it, notice the second, a 
king with a long sceptre of empire, a book of law, and robes of Byzan- 
tine official splendour. Beneath his feet is a curious woman's head with 
heavy braids of hair, and a crown. The third figure is a queen, charm- 
ing as a woman, but particularly well-dressed, and with details of orna- 
ment and person elaborately wrought; worth drawing, if one could only 
draw; worth photographing with utmost care to include the strange 
support on which she stands: a monkey, two dragons, a dog, a basilisk 
with a dog's head. Two prophets follow — not so interesting; — 
prophets rarely interest. Then comes the central bay : two queens who 
claim particular attention, then a prophet, then a saint next the door- 
way; then on the southern jamb-shafts, another saint, a king, a queen, 
and another king. Last comes the southern bay, the Virgin's own, and 
there stands first a figure said to be a youthful king ; then a strongly 
sculptured saint; next the door a figure called also a king, but so 



76 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

charmingly delicate in expression that the robes alone betray his sex; 
and who this exquisite young aureoled king may have been who 
stands so close to the Virgin, at her right hand, no one can now reveal. 
Opposite him is a saint who may be, or should be, the Prince of the 
Apostles ; then a bearded king with a broken sceptre, standing on two 
dragons; and, at last, a badly mutilated queen. 

These statues are the Eginetan marbles of French art ; from them all 
modern French sculpture dates, or ought to date. They are singularly 
interesting; as naif as the smile on the faces of the Greek warriors, but 
no more grotesque than they. You will see Gothic grotesques in 
plenty, and you cannot mistake the two intentions; the twelfth cen- 
tury would sooner have tempted the tortures of every feudal dungeon 
in Europe than have put before the Virgin's eyes any figure that could 
be conceived as displeasing to her. These figures are full of feeling, 
and saturated with worship; but what is most to our purpose is the 
feminine side which they proclaim and insist upon. Not only the 
number of the female figures, and their beauty, but also the singularly 
youthful beauty of several of the males; the superb robes they wear; 
the expression of their faces and their figures; the details of hair, 
stuffs, ornaments, jewels; the refinement and feminine taste of the 
whole, are enough to startle our interest if we recognize what meaning 
they had to the twelfth century. 

These figures look stiff and long and thin and ridiculous to enlight- 
ened citizens of the eighteenth century, but they were made to fit the 
architecture; if you want to know what an enthusiast thinks of them, 
listen to M. Huysmans's "Cathedral." "Beyond a doubt, the most 
beautiful sculpture in the world is in this place." He can hardly find 
words to express his admiration for the queens, and particularly for the 
one on the right of the central doorway. " Never in any period has a 
more expressive figure been thus wrought by the genius of man ; it is 
the chef-d'oeuvre of infantile grace and holy candour. . . . She is the 
elder sister of the Prodigal Son, the one of whom Saint Luke does not 



TOWERS AND PORTALS ^^ 

speak, but who, if she existed, would have pleaded the cause of the 
absent, and insisted, with the father, that he should kill the fatted 
calf at his son's return." The idea is charming if you are the returning 
son, as many twelfth-century pilgrims must have thought themselves; 
but, in truth, the figure is that of a queen; an Eleanor of Guienne; her 
position there is due to her majesty, which bears witness to the celes- 
tial majesty of the Court in which she is only a lady-in-waiting: and 
she is hardly more humanly fascinating than her brother, the youth- 
ful king at the Virgin's right hand, who has nothing of the Prodigal 
Son, but who certainly has much of Lohengrin, or even — almost — 
Tristan. 

The Abbe Bulteau has done his best to name these statues, but the 
names would be only in your way. That the sculptor meant them for 
a Queen of Sheba or a King of Israel has little to do with their mean- 
ing in the twelfth century, when the people were much more likely 
to have named them after the queens and kings they knew. The whole 
charm lies for us in the twelfth-century humanity of Mary and her 
Court; not in the scriptural names under which it was made ortho- 
dox. Here, in this western portal, it stands as the crusaders of 1 100-50 
imagined it; but by walking round the church to the porch over the 
entrance to the north transept, you shall see it again as Blanche of 
Castile and Saint Louis imagined it, a hundred years later, so that you 
will know better whether the earthly attributes are exaggerated or un- 
true. 

Porches, like steeples, were rather a peculiarity of French churches, 
and were studied, varied, one might even say petted, by French archi- 
tects to an extent hardly attempted elsewhere; but among all the 
French porches, those of Chartres are the most famous. There are 
two : one on the north side, devoted to the Virgin ; the other, on the 
south, devoted to the Son. "The mass of intelligence, knowledge, 
acquaintance with effects, practical experience, expended on these 
two porches of Chartres," says VioUet-le-Duc, "would be enough to 



78 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

establish the glory of a whole generation of artists." We begin with 
the north porch because it belonged to the Virgin; and it belonged to 
the Virgin because the north was cold, bleak, sunless, windy, and 
needed warmth, peace, affection, and power to protect against the 
assaults of Satan and his swarming devils. There the all-suffering 
but the all-powerful Mother received other mothers who suffered like 
her, but who, as a rule, were not powerful. Traditionally in the primi- 
tive church, the northern porch belonged to the women. When they 
needed help, they came here, because it was the only place in this world 
or in any other where they had much hope of finding even a recep- 
tion. See how Mary received them! 

The porch extends the whole width of the transept, about one hun- 
dred and twenty feet (37.65 metres), divided into three bays some 
twenty feet deep, and covered with a stone vaulted roof supported on 
piers outside. Begun toward 1215 under Philip Augustus, the archi- 
tectural part was finished toward 1225 under Louis VIII ; and after his 
death in 1226, the decorative work and statuary were carried on 
under the regency of his widow, Blanche of Castile, and through the 
reign of her son. Saint Louis (1235-70), until about 1275, when the 
work was completed by Philip the Hardy. A gift of the royal family of 
France, all the members of the family seem to have had a share in 
building it, and several of their statues have been supposed to adorn 
it. The walls are lined — the porch, in a religious sense, is inhabited 
— by more than seven hundred figures, great and small, all, in one 
way or another, devoted to the glory of the Queen of Heaven. You will 
see that a hundred years have converted the Byzantine Empress into 
a French Queen, as the same years had converted Alix of Savoy into 
Blanche of Castile; but the note of majesty is the same, and the asser- 
tion of power is, if possible, more emphatic. 

The highest note is struck at once, in the central bay, over the door, 
where you see the Coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven, a favour- 
ite subject in art from very early times, and the dominant idea of 



TOWERS AND PORTALS 79 

Mary's church. You see Mary on the left, seated on her throne; on 
the right, seated on a precisely similar throne, is Christ, Who holds 
up His right hand apparently to bless, since Mary already bears the 
crown. Mary bends forward, with her hands raised toward her Son, 
as though in gratitude or adoration or prayer, but certainly not in 
an attitude of feudal homage. On either side, an archangel swings a 
censer. 

On the lintel below, on the left, is represented the death of Mary; 
on the right, Christ carries, in the folds of His mantle, the soul of 
Mary in the form of a little child, and at the same time blesses the body 
which is carried away by angels — The Resurrection of Mary. 

Below the lintel, supporting it, and dividing the doorway in halves, 
is the trumeau, — the central pier, — a new part of the portal which 
was unknown to the western door. Usually in the Virgin's churches, 
as at Rheims, or Amiens or Paris, the Virgin herself, with her Son in 
her arms, stands against this pier, trampling on the dragon with the 
woman's head. Here, not the Virgin with the Christ, but her mother 
Saint Anne stands, with the infant Virgin in her arms ; while beneath 
is, or was, Saint Joachim, her husband, among his flocks, receiving from 
the Archangel Gabriel the annunciation. 

So at the entrance the Virgin declares herself divinely Queen in 
her own right; divinely born; divinely resurrected from death, on the 
third day; seated by divine right on the throne of Heaven, at the right 
hand of God, the Son, with Whom she is one. 

Unless we feel this assertion of divine right in the Queen of Heaven, 
apart from the Trinity, yet one with It, Chartres is unintelligible. The 
extreme emphasis laid upon it at the church door shows what the 
church means within. Of course, the assertion was not strictly ortho- 
dox; perhaps, since we are not members of the Church, we might be 
unnoticed and unrebuked if we start by suspecting that the worship 
of the Virgin never was strictly orthodox; but Chartres was hers 
before it ever belonged to the Church, and, like Lourdes in our own 



8o MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

time, was a shrine peculiarly favoured by her presence. The mere 
fact that it was a bishopric had little share in its sanctity. The bishop 
was much more afraid of Mary than he was of any Church Council 
ever held. 

Critics are doing their best to destroy the peculiar personal interest 
of this porch, but tourists and pilgrims may be excused for insisting 
on their traditional rights here, since the porch is singular, even in the 
thirteenth century, for belonging entirely to them and the royal fam- 
ily of France, subject only to the Virgin. True artists, turned critics, 
think also less of rules than of values, and no ignorant public can be 
trusted to join the critics in losing temper judiciously over the date 
or correctness of a portrait until they knew something of its motives and 
merits. The public has always felt certain that some of the statues which 
stand against the outer piers of this porch are portraits, and they see 
no force in the objection that such decoration was not customary in 
the Church. Many things at Chartres were not customary in the Church, 
although the Church now prefers not to dwell on them. Therefore 
the student returns to Viollet-le-Duc with his usual delight at finding 
at least one critic whose sense of values is stronger than his sense of 
rule: "Each statue," he says in his "Dictionary" (iii, i66), "possesses 
its personal character which remains graven on the memory like the 
recollection of a living being whom one has known. ... A large part 
of the statues in the porches of Notre Dame de Chartres, as well as 
of the portals of the Cathedrals of Amiens and Rheims, possess these 
individual qualities, and this it is which explains why these statues 
produce on the crowd so vivid an impression that it names them, 
knows them, and attaches to each of them an idea, often a legend." 

Probably the crowd did so from the first moment they saw the 
statues, and with good reason. At all events, they have attached to 
two of the most individual figures on the north porch, two names, 
perhaps the best known in France in the year 1226, but which since 
the year 1300 can have conveyed only the most shadowy meaning to 



TOWERS AND PORTALS 8i 

any but pure antiquarians. The group is so beautiful as to be given 
a plate to itself in the " Monographie " (number 26), as representing 
Philip Hurepel and his wife Mahaut de Boulogne. So little could any 
crowd, or even any antiquarian, at any time within six hundred years 
have been likely to pitch on just these persons to associate with 
Blanche of Castile in any kind of family unity, that the mere sugges- 
tion seems wild; yet Blanche outlived Pierre by nearly twenty years, 
and her power over this transept and porch ended only with her death 
as regent in 1252. 

Philippe, nicknamed Hurepel, — Boarskin, — was a " fils de France," 
whose father, Philip Augustus, had serious, not to say fatal, difficul- 
ties with the Church about the legality of his marriage, and was forced 
to abandon his wife, who died in 1201, after giving birth to Hurepel 
in 1200. The child was recognized as legitimate, and stood next to 
the throne, after his half-brother Louis, who was thirteen years older. 
Almost at his birth he was affianced to Mahaut, Countess of Boulogne, 
and the marriage was celebrated in 12 16. Rich and strongly connected, 
Hurepel naturally thought himself — and was — head of the royal 
family next to the King, and when his half-brother, Louis VHI, died 
in 1226, leaving only a son, afterwards Saint Louis, a ten-year-old 
boy, to succeed, Hurepel very properly claimed the guardianship of 
his infant nephew, and deeply resented being excluded by Queen 
Blanche from what he regarded — perhaps with justice — as his right. 
Nearly all the great lords and the members of the royal family sided 
with him, and entered into a civil war against Blanche, at the moment 
when these two porches of Chartres were building, between 1228 and 
1230. The two greatest leaders of the conspiracy were Hurepel, whom 
we are expected to recognize on the pier of this porch, and Pierre 
Mauclerc, of Brittany and Dreux, whom we have no choice but to 
admit on the trumeau of the other. In those days every great feudal 
lord was more or less related by blood to the Crown, and although 
Blanche of Castile was also a cousin as well as queen-mother, they 



82 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

hated her as a Spanish intruder with such hatred as men felt in an age 
when passions were real. 

That these two men should be found here, associated with Blanche 
in the same work, at the same time, under the same roof, is a fantastic 
idea, and students can feel in this political difficulty a much stronger 
objection to admitting Hurepel to Queen Blanche's porch than any 
supposed rule of Church custom; yet the first privilege of tourist ig- 
norance is the right to see, or try to see, their thirteenth century with 
thirteenth-century eyes. Passing by the statues of Philip and Mahaut, 
and stepping inside the church door, almost the first figure that the 
visitor sees on lifting his eyes to the upper windows of the transept is 
another figure of Philippe Hurepel, in glass, on his knees, with clasped 
hands, before an altar ; and to prevent possibility of mistake his blazoned 
coat bears the words: "Phi: Conte de Bolone." Apparently he is the 
donor, for, in the rose above, he sits in arms on a white horse with a 
shield bearing the blazon of France. Obliged to make his peace with 
the Queen in 1230, Hurepel died in 1233 or 1234, while Blanche was 
still regent, and instantly took his place as of right side by side with 
Blanche's castles of Castile among the great benefactors of the church. 

Beneath the next rose is Mahaut herself, as donor, bearing her 
husband's arms of France, suggesting that the windows must have been 
given together, probably before Philip's death in 1233, since Mahaut 
was married again in 1238, this time to Alfonso of Portugal, who re- 
pudiated her in 1249, and left her to die in her own town of Boulogne 
in 1258. Lastly, in the third window of the series, is her daughter 
Jeanne, — "lehenne," — who was probably born before 1220, and 
who was married in 1236 to Gaucher de Chatillon, one of the greatest 
warriors of his time. Jeanne also — according to the Abbe Bulteau 
(ill, 225) — bears the arms of her father and mother; which seems to 
suggest that she gave this window before her marriage. These three 
windows, therefore, have the air of dating at least as early as 1233 
when Philip Hurepel died, while next them follow two more roses, and 



TOWERS AND PORTALS 83 

f 
the great rose of France, presumably of the same date, all scattered 

over with the castles of Queen Blanche. The motive of the porch outside 
is repeated in the glass, as it should be, and as the Saint Anne of the Rose 
,of France, within, repeats the Saint Anne on the trumeau of the portal. 
The personal stamp of the royal family is intense, but the stamp of the 
Virgin's personality is intenser still. In the presence of Mary, not only 
did princes hide their quarrels, but they also put on their most courte- 
ous manners and the most refined and even austere address. The 
Byzantine display of luxury and adornment had vanished. All the 
figures suggest the sanctity of the King and his sister Isabel; the court 
has the air of a convent; but the idea of Mary's majesty is asserted 
through it all. The artists and donors and priests forgot nothing which, 
in their judgment, could set off the authority, elegance, and refinement 
of the Queen of Heaven; even the young ladies-in-waiting are there, 
figured by the twelve Virtues and the fourteen Beatitudes; and, in- 
deed, though men are plenty and some of them are handsome, women 
give the tone, the charm, and mostly the intelligence. The Court of 
Mary is feminine, and its charms are Grace and Love; perhaps even 
more grace than love, in a social sense, if you look at Beauty and 
Friendship among Beatitudes. 

M. Huysmans insists that this sculpture is poor in comparison with 
his twelfth-century Prodigal Daughter, and I hope you can enter into 
the spirit of his enthusiasm; but other people prefer the thirteenth- 
century work, and think it equals the best Greek. Approaching, or 
surpassing this,' — as you like, — is the sculpture you will see at Rheims, 
of the same period, and perhaps the same hands; but, for our purpose, 
the Queen of Sheba, here in the right-hand bay, is enough, because you 
can compare it on the spot with M. Huysmans's figure on the western 
portal, which may also be a Queen of Sheba, who, as spouse of Solomon, 
typified the Church, and therefore prefigured Mary herself. Both are 
types of Court beauty and grace, one from the twelfth century, the 
other from the thirteenth, and you can prefer which you please; but 



84 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

you want to bear in mind that each, in her time, pleased the Virgin. 
You can even take for a settled fact that these were the types of femi- 
nine beauty and grace which pleased the Virgin beyond all others. 

The purity of taste, feeling, and manners which stamps the art of 
these centuries, as it did the Court of Saint Louis and his mother, is 
something you will not wholly appreciate till you reach the depravity 
of the Valois; but still you can see how exquisite the Virgin's taste was, 
and how pure. You can also see how she shrank from the sight of pain. 
Here, in the central bay, next to King David, who stands at her right 
hand, is the great figure of Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac. If there 
is one subject more revolting than another to a woman who typifies the 
Mother, it is this subject of Abraham and Isaac, with its compound 
horror of masculine stupidity and brutality. The sculptor has tried to 
make even this motive a pleasing one. He has placed Abraham against 
the column in the correct harshness of attitude, with his face turned 
aside and up, listening for his orders; but the little Isaac, with hands 
and feet tied, leans like a bundle of sticks against his father's knee 
with an expression of perfect faith and confidence, while Abraham's 
left hand quiets him and caresses the boy's face, with a movement 
that must have gone straight to Mary's heart, for Isaac always pre- 
figured Christ. 

The glory of Mary was not one of terror, and her porch contains 
no appeal to any emotion but those of her perfect grace. If we were 
to stay here for weeks, we should find only this idea worked into every 
detail. The Virgin of the thirteenth century is no longer an Empress; 
she is Queen Mother, — an idealized Blanche of Castile; — too high 
to want, or suffer, or to revenge, or to aspire, but not too high to pity, 
to punish, or to pardon. The women went to her porch for help as 
naturally as babies to their mother; and the men, in her presence, fell 
on their knees because they feared her intelligence and her anger. 

Not that all the men showed equal docility! We must go next, 
round the church, to the south porch, which was the gift of Pierre 



TOWERS AND PORTALS 85 

Mauclerc, Comte de Dreux, another member of the royal family, great- 
grandson of Louis VI, and therefore second cousin to Louis VIII and 
Philip Hurepel. Philip Augustus, his father's first cousin, married the 
young man, in 12 12, to Alix, heiress of the Duchy of Brittany, and this 
marriage made him one of the most powerful vassals of the Crown. 
He joined Philip Hurepel in resisting the regency of Queen Blanche 
in 1227, and Blanche, after a long struggle, caused him to be deposed 
in 1230. Pierre was obliged to submit, and was pardoned. Until 1236, 
he remained in control of the Duchy of Brittany, but then was obliged 
to surrender his power to his son, and turned his turbulent activity 
against the infidels in Syria and Egypt, dying in 1250, on his return 
from Saint Louis's disastrous crusade. Pierre de Dreux was a mascu- 
line character, — a bad cleric, as his nickname Mauclerc testified, but 
a gentleman, a soldier, and a scholar, and, what is more to our purpose, 
a man of taste. He built the south porch at Chartres, apparently as a 
memorial of his marriage with Alix in 12 12, and the statuary is of the 
same date with that of the north porch, but, like that, it was not fin- 
ished when Pierre died in 1250. 

One would like to know whether Pierre preferred to take the 
southern entrance, or whether he was driven there by the royal claim 
to the Virgin's favour. The southern porch belongs to the Son, as the 
northern belongs to the Mother. Pierre never showed much defer- 
ence to women, and probably felt more at his ease under the protec- 
tion of the Son than of Mary; but in any case he showed as clearly as 
possible what he thought on this question of persons. To Pierre, Christ 
was first, and he asserted his opinion as emphatically as Blanche as- 
serted hers. 

Which porch is the more beautiful is a question for artists to discuss 
and decide, if they can. Either is good enough for us, whose pose is 
ignorance, and whose pose is strictly correct; but apart from its beauty 
or its art, there is also the question of feeling, of motive, which puts the 
Porche de Dreux in contrast with the Porche de France, and this is 



86 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

wholly within our competence. At the outset, the central bay displays, 
above the doorway, Christ, on a throne, raising His hands to show the 
stigmata, the wounds which were the proof of man's salvation. At His 
right hand sits the Mother, — without her crown ; on His left, in equal 
rank with the Mother, sits Saint John the Evangelist. Both are in the 
same attitude of supplication as intercessors; there is no distinction 
in rank or power between Mary and John, since neither has any power 
except what Christ gives them. Pierre did not, indeed, put the Mother 
on her knees before the Son, as you can see her at Amiens and in later 
churches, — certainly bad taste in Mary's own palace; but he al- 
lowed her no distinction which is not her strict right. The angels above 
and around bear the symbols of the Passion ; they are unconscious of 
Mary's presence; they are absorbed in the perfections of the Son. On 
the lintel just below is the Last Judgment, where Saint Michael re- 
appears, weighing the souls of the dead which Mary and John above 
are trying to save from the strict justice of Christ. The whole melo- 
drama of Church terrors appears after the manner of the thirteenth 
century, on this church door, without regard to Mary's feelings; and 
below, against the trumeau, stands the great figure of Christ, — the 
whole Church, — trampling on the lion and dragon. On either side 
of the doorway stand six great figures of the Apostles asserting them- 
selves as the columns of the Church, and looking down at us with an 
expression no longer calculated to calm our fears or encourage extrav- 
agant hopes. No figure on this porch suggests a portrait or recalls 
a memory. 

Very grand, indeed, Is this doorway; dignified, impressive, and 
masculine to a degree seldom if ever equalled in art ; and the left bay 
rivals it. There, in the tympanum, Christ appears again; standing; 
bearing on His head the crown royal ; alone, except for the two angels 
who adore, and surrounded only by the martyrs. His witnesses. The 
right bay is devoted to Saint Nicholas and the Saints Confessors who 
bear witness to the authority of Christ In faith. Of the twenty-eight 



TOWERS AND PORTALS 87 

great figures, the officers of the royal court, who make thus the strength 
of the Church beneath Christ, not one is a woman. The mascuHne 
orthodoxy of Pierre Mauclerc has spared neither sex nor youth ; all are 
of a maturity which chills the blood, excepting two, whose youthful 
beauty is heightened by the severity of their surroundings, so that the 
Abbe Bulteau makes bold even to say that "the two statues of Saint 
George and of Saint Theodore may be regarded as the most beautiful 
of our cathedral, perhaps even as the two masterpieces of statuary at 
the end of the thirteenth century." On that point, let every one follow 
his taste ; but one reflection at least seems to force itself on the mind in 
comparing these twenty-eight figures. Certainly the sword, however 
it may compare with the pen in other directions, is in art more power- 
ful than all the pens, or volumes, or crosiers ever made. Your " Golden 
Legend" and Roman Breviary are here the only guide-books worth 
consulting, and the stories of young George and Theodore stand there 
recorded; as their miracle under the walls of Antioch, during the first 
crusade, is matter of history; but among these magnificent figures one 
detects at a glance that it is not the religion or sacred purity of the sub- 
ject, or even the miracles or the sufferings, which inspire passion for 
Saint George and Saint Theodore, under the Abbe's robe; it is with 
him, as with the plain boy and girl, simply youth, with lance and 
sword and shield. 

These two figures stand in the outer embrasures of the left bay, 
where they can be best admired, and perhaps this arrangement shows 
what Perron de Dreux, as he was commonly called, loved most, in his 
heart of hearts; but elsewhere, even in this porch, he relaxed his 
severity, and became at times almost gracious to women. Good judges 
have, indeed, preferred this porch to the northern one; but, be that 
as you please, it contains seven hundred and eighty-three figures, 
large and small, to serve for comparison. Among these, the female 
element has its share, though not a conspicuous one; and even the 
Virgin gets her rights, though not beside her Son. To see her, you 



88 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

must stand outside in the square and, with a glass, look at the central 
pignon, or gable, of the porch. There, just above the point of the arch, 
you will see Mary on her throne, crowned, wearing her royal robes, 
and holding the Child on her knees, with the two archangels on either 
side offering incense. Pierre de Dreux, or some one else, admitted at 
last that she was Queen Regent, although evidently not eager to do 
so; and if you turn your glass up to the gable of the transept itself, 
above the great rose and the colonnade over it, you can see another and 
a colossal statue of the Virgin, but standing, with the Child on her 
left arm. She seems to be crowned, and to hold the globe in her right 
hand; but the Abbe Bulteau says it is a flower. The two archangels are 
still there. This figure is thought to have been a part of the finishing 
decoration added by Philip the Fair in 1304. 

In theology, Pierre de Dreux seems to show himself a more learned 
clerk than his cousins of France, and, as an expression of the meaning 
the church of Mary should externally display, the Porche de Dreux, if 
not as personal, is as energetic as the Porche de France, or the western 
portal. As we pass into the Cathedral, under the great Christ, on the 
trumeau, you must stop to look at Pierre himself. A bridegroom, 
crowned with flowers on his wedding-day, he kneels in prayer, while 
two servants distribute bread to the poor. Below, you see him again, 
seated with his wife Alix before a table with one loaf, assisting at the 
meal they give to the poor. Pierre kneels to God; he and his wife 
bow before the Virgin and the poor; — but not to Queen Blanche! 

Now let us enter! — 



CHAPTER VI 

THE VIRGIN OF CHARTRES 

WE must take ten minutes to accustom our eyes to the light, and 
we had better use them to seek the reason why we come to 
Chartres rather than to Rheims or Amiens or Bourges, for the cathe- 
dral that fills our ideal. The truth is, there are several reasons; there 
generally are, for doing the things we like ; and after you have studied 
Chartres to the ground, and got your reasons settled, you will never 
find an antiquarian to agree with you; the architects will probably 
listen to you with contempt; and even these excellent priests, whose 
kindness is great, whose patience is heavenly, and whose good opinion 
you would so gladly gain, will turn from you with pain, if not with 
horror. The Gothic is singular in this ; one seems easily at home in the 
Renaissance; one is not too strange in the Byzantine; as for the Ro- 
man, it is ourselves; and we could walk blindfolded through every 
chink and cranny of the Greek mind; all these styles seem modern, 
when we come close to them ; but the Gothic gets away. No two men 
think alike about it, and no woman agrees with either man. The Church 
itself never agreed about it, and the architects agree even less than the 
priests. To most minds it casts too many shadows ; it wraps itself in 
mystery; and when people talk of mystery, they commonly mean 
fear. To others, the Gothic seems hoary with age and decrepitude, 
and its shadows mean death. What is curious to watch is the fanatical 
conviction of the Gothic enthusiast, to whom the twelfth century means 
exuberant youth, the eternal child of Wordsworth, over whom its 
immortality broods like the day; it is so simple and yet so complicated ; 
it sees so much and so little; it loves so many toys and cares for so few 
necessities; its youth is so young, its age so old, and its youthful 



90 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

yearning for old thought is so disconcerting, like the mysterious 

senility of the baby that — 

Deaf and silent, reads the eternal deep, 
Haunted forever by the eternal mind. 

One need not take it more seriously than one takes the baby itself. 
Our amusement is to play with it, and to catch its meaning in its 
smile ; and whatever Chartres may be now, when young it was a smile. 
To the Church, no doubt, its cathedral here has a fixed and adminis- 
trative meaning, which is the same as that of every other bishop's 
seat and with which we have nothing whatever to do. To us, it is a 
child's fancy; a toy-house to please the Queen of Heaven, — to please 
her so much that she would be happy in it, — to charm her till she 
smiled. 

The Queen Mother was as majestic as you like; she was absolute; 
she could be stern; she was not above being angry; but she was still 
a woman, who loved grace, beauty, ornament, — her toilette, robes, 
jewels; — who considered the arrangements of her palace with atten- 
tion, and liked both light and colour; who kept a keen eye on her 
Court, and exacted prompt and willing obedience from king and arch- 
bishops as well as from beggars and drunken priests. She protected 
her friends and punished her enemies. She required space, beyond 
what was known in the Courts of kings, because she was liable at all 
times to have ten thousand people begging her for favours — mostly 
inconsistent with law — and deaf to refusal. She was extremely 
sensitive to neglect, to disagreeable impressions, to want of intelligence 
in her surroundings. She was the greatest artist, as she was the great- 
est philosopher and musician and theologist, that ever lived on earth, 
except her Son, Who, at Chartres, is still an Infant under her guardian- 
ship. Her taste was infallible; her silence eternally final. This church 
was built for her in this spirit of simple-minded, practical, utilitarian 
faith, — in this singleness of thought, exactly as a little girl sets up a 
doll-house for her favourite blonde doll. Unless you can go back to 



THE VIRGIN OF CHARTRES 91 

your dolls, you are out of place here. If you can go back to them, and 
get rid of one small hour of the weight of custom, you shall see Chartres 
in glory. 

The palaces of earthly queens were hovels compared with these 
palaces of the Queen of Heaven at Chartres, Paris, Laon, Noyon, 
Rheims, Amiens, Rouen, Bayeux, Coutances, — a list that might be 
stretched into a volume. The nearest approach we have made to a 
palace was the Merveille at Mont-Saint-Michel, but no Queen had a 
palace equal to that. The Merveille was built, or designed, about the 
year 1200; toward the year 1500, Louis XI built a great castle at Loches 
in Touraine, and there Queen Anne de Bretagne had apartments which 
still exist, and which we will visit. At Blois you shall see the residence 
which served for Catherine de Medicis till her death in 1589. Anne de 
Bretagne was trebly queen, and Catherine de Medicis took her stand- 
ard of comfort from the luxury of Florence. At Versailles you can see 
the apartments which the queens of the Bourbon line occupied through 
their century of magnificence. All put together, and then trebled in 
importance, could not rival the splendour of any single cathedral 
dedicated to Queen Mary in the thirteenth century ; and of them all, 
Chartres was built to be peculiarly and exceptionally her delight. 

One has grown so used to this sort of loose comparison, this reckless 
waste of words, that one no longer adopts an idea unless it is driven 
in with hammers of statistics and columns of figures. With the irri- 
tating demand for literal exactness and perfectly straight lines which 
lights up every truly American eye, you will certainly ask when this 
exaltation of Mary began, and unless you get the dates, you will doubt 
the facts. It is your own fault if they are tiresome; you might easily 
read them all in the " Iconographie de la Sainte Vierge," by M. Ro- 
hault de Fleury, published in 1878. You can start at Byzantium with 
the Empress Helena in 326, or with the Council of Ephesus in 431. 
You w411 find the Virgin acting as the patron saint of Constantinople 
and of the Imperial residence, under as many names as Artemis or 



92 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

Aphrodite had borne. As Godmother {©eo/xrjTijp) , Deipara (©eoro/co?), 
Pathfinder (OSrjryijrpta), she was the chief favourite of the Eastern 
Empire, and her picture was carried at the head of every procession 
and hung on the wall of every hut and hovel, as it is still wherever 
the Greek Church goes. In the year 6io, when Heraclius sailed from 
Carthage to dethrone Phocas at Constantinople, his ships carried the 
image of the Virgin at their mastheads. In 1 143, just before the fleche 
on the Chartres clocher was begun, the Basileus John Comnenus died, 
and so devoted was he to the Virgin that, on a triumphal entry into 
Constantinople, he put the image of the Mother of God in his chariot, 
while he himself walked. In the Western Church the Virgin had al- 
ways been highly honoured, but it was not until the crusades that she 
began to overshadow the Trinity itself. Then her miracles became 
more frequent and her shrines more frequented, so that Chartres, 
soon after iioo, was rich enough to build its western portal with By- 
zantine splendour. A proof of the new outburst can be read in the 
story of Citeaux. For us, Citeaux means Saint Bernard, who joined 
the Order in 11 12, and in 11 15 founded his Abbey of Clairvaux in the 
territory of Troyes. In him, the religious emotion of the half-century 
between the first and second crusades (i 095-1 145) centred as in no one 
else. He was a French precursor of Saint Francis of Assisi who lived 
a century later. If we were to plunge into the story of Citeaux and 
Saint Bernard we should never escape, for Saint Bernard incarnates 
what we are trying to understand, and his mind is further from us 
than the architecture. You would lose hold of everything actual, if 
you could comprehend in its contradictions the strange mixture of 
passion and caution, the austerity, the self-abandonment, the vehe- 
mence, the restraint, the love, the hate, the miracles, and the scepti- 
cism of Saint Bernard. The Cistercian Order, which was founded in 
1098, from the first put all its churches under the special protection 
of the Virgin, and Saint Bernard in his time was regarded as the apple 
of the Virgin's eye. Tradition as old as the twelfth century, which long 



THE VIRGIN OF CHARTRES 93 

afterwards gave to Murillo the subject of a famous painting, told that 
once, when he was reciting before her statue the "Ave Maris Stella," 
and came to the words, "Monstra te esse Matrem," the image, press- 
ing its breast, dropped on the lips of her servant three drops of the 
milk which had nourished the Saviour. The same miracle, in various 
forms, was told of many other persons, both saints and sinners; but it 
made so much impression on the mind of the age that, in the four- 
teenth century, Dante, seeking in Paradise for some official introduc- 
tion to the foot of the Throne, found no intercessor with the Queen of 
Heaven more potent than Saint Bernard. You can still read Bernard's 
hymns to the Virgin, and even his sermons, if you like. To him she was 
the great mediator. In the eyes of a culpable humanity, Christ was 
too sublime, too terrible, too just, but not even the weakest human 
frailty could fear to approach his Mother. Her attribute was humility; 
her love and pity were infinite. "Let him deny your mercy who can 
say that he has ever asked it in vain." 

Saint Bernard was emotional and to a certain degree mystical, like 
Adam de Saint- Victor, whose hymns were equally famous, but the 
emotional saints and mystical poets were not by any means allowed to 
establish exclusive rights to the Virgin's favour. Abelard was as de- 
voted as they were, and wrote hymns as well. Philosophy claimed her, 
and Albert the Great, the head of scholasticism, the teacher of Thomas 
Aquinas, decided in her favour the question: "Whether the Blessed 
Virgin possessed perfectly the seven liberal arts." The Church at 
Chartres had decided it a hundred years before by putting the seven 
liberal arts next her throne, with Aristotle himself to witness; but 
Albertus gave the reason: " I hold that she did, for it is written, 'Wis- 
dom has built herself a house, and has sculptured seven columns.' 
That house is the blessed Virgin; the seven columns are the seven 
liberal arts. Mary, therefore, had perfect mastery of science." Natur- 
ally she had also perfect mastery of economics, and most of her great 
churches were built in economic centres. The guilds were, if possible, 



94 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

more devoted to her than the monks; the bourgeoisie of Paris, Rouen, 
Amiens, Laon, spend money by milHons to gain her favour. Most sur- 
prising of all, the great military class was perhaps the most vociferous. 
Of all inappropriate haunts for the gentle, courteous, pitying Mary, a 
field of battle seems to be the worst, if not distinctly blasphemous; yet 
the greatest French warriors insisted on her leading them into battle, 
and in the actual melee when men were killing each other, on every 
battle-field in Europe, for at least five hundred years, Mary was pres- 
ent, leading both sides. The battle-cry of the famous Constable du 
Guesclin was "Notre-Dame-Guesclin"; "Notre-Dame-Coucy" was 
the cry of the great Sires de Coucy ; " Notre- Dame- Auxerre" ; " Notre- 
Dame-Sancerre ' ' ; Notre-Dame-Hainault ' ' ; Notre-Dame-Gueldres ' ' ; 
" Notre-Dame-Bourbon " ; " Notre- Dame-Bearn " ; — all well-known 
battle-cries. The King's own battle at one time cried, " Notre-Dame- 
Saint-Denis-Montjoie" ; the Dukes of Burgundy cried, '' Notre-Dame- 
Bourgogne ' ' ; and even the soldiers of the Pope were said to cry, ' ' Notre- 
Dame-Saint-Pierre." 

The measure of this devotion, which proves to any religious American 
mind, beyond possible cavil, its serious and practical reality, is the 
money it cost. According to statistics, in the single century between 
1 170 and 1270, the French built eighty cathedrals and nearly five 
hundred churches of the cathedral class, which would have cost, ac- 
cording to an estimate made in 1840, more than five thousand millions 
to replace. Five thousand million francs is a thousand million dollars, 
and this covered only the great churches of a single century. The same 
scale of expenditure had been going on since the year 1000, and almost 
every parish in France had rebuilt its church in stone; to this day 
France is strewn with the ruins of this architecture, and yet the 
still preserved churches of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, among 
the churches that belong to the Romanesque and Transition period, 
are numbered by hundreds until they reach well into the thousands. 
The share of this capital which was — if one may use a commercial 



THE VIRGIN OF CHARTRES 95 

figure — invested in the Virgin cannot be fixed, any more than the 
total sum given to religious objects between 1000 and 1300; but in a 
spiritual and artistic sense, it was almost the whole, and expressed an 
intensity of conviction never again reached by any passion, whether 
of religion, of loyalty, of patriotism, or of wealth; perhaps never even 
parallelled by any single economic effort, except in war. Nearly every 
great church of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries belonged to Mary, 
until in France one asks for the church of Notre Dame as though it 
meant cathedral ; but, not satisfied with this, she contracted the habit 
of requiring in all churches a chapel of her own, called in English the 
"Lady Chapel," which was apt to be as large as the church but was 
always meant to be handsomer; and there, behind the high altar, in 
her own private apartment, Mary sat, receiving her innumerable sup- 
pliants, and ready at any moment to step up upon the high altar itself 
to support the tottering authority of the local saint. 

Expenditure like this rests invariably on an economic idea. Just as 
the French of the nineteenth century invested their surplus capital in 
a railway system in the belief that they would make money by it in 
this life, in the thirteenth they trusted their money to the Queen of 
Heaven because of their belief in her power to repay it with interest 
in the life to come. The investment was based on the power of Mary 
as Queen rather than on any orthodox Church conception of the Vir- 
gin's legitimate station. Papal Rome never greatly loved Byzantine 
empresses or French queens. The Virgin of Chartres was never wholly 
sympathetic to the Roman Curia. To this day the Church writers — 
like the Abbe Bulteau or M. Rohault de Fleury — are singularly shy 
of the true Virgin of majesty, whether at Chartres or at Byzantium 
or wherever she is seen. The fathers Martin and, Cahier at Bourges 
alone left her true value. Had the Church controlled her, the Virgin 
would perhaps have remained prostrate at the foot of the Cross. 
Dragged by a Byzantine Court, backed by popular insistence and im- 
pelled by overpowering self-interest, the Church accepted the Virgin 



96 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



throned and crowned, seated by Christ, the Judge throned and 
crowned; but even this did not wholly satisfy the French of the thir- 
teenth century who seemed bent on absorbing Christ in His Mother, 
and making the Mother the Church, and Christ the Symbol. 

The Church had crowned and enthroned her almost from the 
beginning, and could not have dethroned her if it would. In all Chris- 
tian art — sculpture or mosaic, painting or poetry — the Virgin's 
rank was expressly asserted. Saint Bernard, like John Comnenus, and 
probably at the same time (1120-40), chanted hymns to the Virgin 
as Queen : — 

salutaris Virgo Stella Maris O saviour Virgin, Star of Sea, . I 

Generans prolem, ^Equitatis solem, Who bore for child the Son of Justice, ' 

Lucis auctorem, Retinens pudorem, The source of Light, Virgin always 
Suscipe laudem! Hear our praise! 



Celi Regina Per quam medicina 
Datur aegrotis, Gratia devotis, 
Gaudium molstis, Mundo lux coelestis, 
Spesque salutis; 

A.ula regalis, Virgo specialis, 
Posce medelam Nobis et tutelam, 
Suscipe vota, Precibusque cuncta 
Pelle molesta! 



Queen of Heaven who have given 
Medicine to the sick, Grace to the devout, 
Joy to the sad, Heaven's light to the world 
And hope of salvation; 

Court royal, Virgin t)^ical, 
Grant us cure and guard, 
Accept our vows, and by prayers 
Drive all griefs away! 



As the lyrical poet of the twelfth century, Adam de Saint- Victor 
seems to have held rank higher if possible than that of Saint Bernard, 
and his hymns on the Virgin are certainly quite as emphatic an as- 
sertion of her majesty: — 



Imperatrix supemorum ! 
Superatrix infernorum! 
Eligenda via coeli, 
Retinenda spe fideli, 
Separatos a te longe 
Revocatos ad te junge 
Tuorum collegio! 



Empress of the highest, 
Mistress over the lowest, 
Chosen path of Heaven, 
Held fast by faithful hope. 
Those separated from you far, 
Recalled to you, unite 
In your fold! 



To delight in the childish jingle of the mediaeval Latin is a sign 
of a futile mind, no doubt, and I beg pardon of you and of the Church 
for wasting your precious summer day on poetry which was regarded 



THE VIRGIN OF CHARTRES 



97 



as mystical in its age and which now sounds like a nursery rhyme ; but a 
verse or two of Adam's hymn on the Assumption of the Virgin com- 
pletes the record of her rank, and goes to complete also the documen- 
tary proof of her majesty at Chartres : — 



Salve, Mater Salvatoris! 
Vas electum! Vas honoris! 

Vas coelestis Gratiae! 
Ab aeterno Vas provisum ! 
Vas insigne! Vas excisum 

Manu sapientiae! 

Salve, Mater pietatis, 
Et totius Trinitatis 

Nobile Triclinium! 
Verbi tamen incarnati 
Speciale majestati 

Praeparans hospitium! 

Maria! Stella maris! 
Dignitate singularis, 
Super omnes ordinaris 

Ordines coelestium! 
In supremo sita poll 
Nos commenda tuae proli, 
Ne terrores sive doli 

Nos supplantent hostium! 



Mother of our Saviour, hail ! 
Chosen vessel! Sacred Grail! 

Font of celestial grace! 
From eternity forethought! 
By the hand of Wisdom wrought! 

Precious, faultless Vase! 

Hail, Mother of Divinity! 
Hail, Temple of the Trinity! 

Home of the Triune God! 
In whom the Incarnate Word hath birth. 
The King! to whom you gave on earth 

Imperial abode. 

Oh, Maria! Constellation! 
Inspiration! Elevation! 
Rule and Law and Ordination 

Of the angels' host! 
Highest height of God's Creation, 
Pray your Son's commiseration. 
Lest, by fear or fraud, salvation 

For our souls be lost! 



Constantly — one might better say at once, officially, she was ad- 
dressed in these terms of supreme majesty: " Imperatrix supernorum! " 
" Coeli Regina! " "Aula regahs! " but the twelfth century seemed deter- 
mined to carry the idea out to its logical conclusion in defiance of dogma. 
Not only was the Son absorbed in the Mother, or represented as under 
her guardianship, but the Father fared no better, and the Holy Ghost 
followed. The poets regarded the Virgin as the "Templum Trinita- 
tis"; "totius Trinitatis nobile Triclinium." She was the refectory of the 
Trinity — the "Triclinium" — because the refectory was the largest 
room and contained the whole of the members, and was divided in 
three parts by two rows of columns. She was the ' ' Templum Trinitatis, 
the Church itself, with its triple aisle. The Trinity was absorbed in her. 



98 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

This Is a delicate subject In the Church, and you must feel It with 
delicacy, without brutally insisting on Its necessary contradictions. 
All theology and all philosophy are full of contradictions quite as 
flagrant and far less sympathetic. This particular variety of religious 
faith Is simply human, and has made its appearance In one form or 
another in nearly all religions ; but though the twelfth century carried 
It to an extreme, and at Chartres you see It In Its most charming ex- 
pression, we have got always to make allowances for what was going 
on beneath the surface In men's minds, consciously or unconsciously, 
and for the latent scepticism which lurks behind all faith. The Church 
Itself never quite accepted the full claims of what was called Mariola- 
try. One may be sure, too, that the bourgeois capitalist and the stu- 
dent of the schools, each from his own point of view, watched the Vir- 
gin with anxious Interest. The bourgeois had put an enormous share of 
his capital Into what was in fact an economical speculation, not unlike 
the South Sea Scheme, or the railway system of our own time ; except 
that In one case the energy was devoted to shortening the road to 
Heaven; In the other, to shortening the road to Paris; but no serious 
schoolman could have felt entirely convinced that God would enter 
Into a business partnership with man, to establish a sort of joint-stock 
society for altering the operation of divine and universal laws. The 
bourgeois cared little for the philosophical doubt if the economical 
result proved to be good, but he watched this result with his usual 
practical sagacity, and required an experience of only about three 
generations (i 200-1 300) to satisfy himself that relics were not certain 
In their effects; that the Saints were not always able or willing to 
help; that Mary herself could not certainly be bought or bribed; that 
prayer without money seemed to be quite as efficacious as prayer with 
money; and that neither the road to Heaven nor Heaven itself had 
been made surer or brought nearer by an investment of capital which 
amounted to the best part of the wealth of France. Economically 
speaking, he became satisfied that his enormous money-Investment 



THE VIRGIN OF CHARTRES 



99 



had proved to be an almost total loss, and the reaction on his mind 
was as violent as the emotion. For three hundred years it prostrated 
France. The efforts of the bourgeoisie and the peasantry to recover 
their property, so far as it was recoverable, have lasted to the present 
day and we had best take care not to get mixed in those passions. 

If you are to get the full enjoyment of Chartres, you must, for the 
time, believe in Mary as Bernard and Adam did, and feel her presence 
as the architects did, in every stone they placed, and every touch they 
chiselled. You must try first to rid your mind of the traditional idea 
that the Gothic is an intentional expression of religious gloom. The 
necessity for light was the motive of the Gothic architects. They needed 
light and always more light, until they sacrificed safety and common 
sense in trying to get it. They converted their walls into windows, 
raised their vaults, diminished their piers, until their churches could no 
longer stand. You will see the limits at Beauvais; at Chartres we have 
not got so far, but even here, in places where the Virgin wanted it, — 
as above the high altar, — the architect has taken all the light -there 
was to take. For the same reason, fenestration became the most im- 
portant part of the Gothic architect's work, and at Chartres was un- 
commonly interesting because the architect was obliged to design a 
new system, which should at the same time satisfy the laws of con- 
struction and the taste and imagination of Mary. No doubt the first 
command of the Queen of Heaven was for light, but the second, at 
least equally imperative, was for colour. Any earthly queen, even 
though she were not Byzantine in taste, loved colour; and the truest 
of queens — the only true Queen of Queens — had richer and finer 
taste in colour than the queens of fifty earthly kingdoms, as you will 
see when we come to the immense effort to gratify her in the glass of 
her windows. Illusion for illusion, — granting for the moment that 
Mary was an illusion, — the Virgin Mother in this instance repaid 
to her worshippers a larger return for their money than the capitalist 
has ever been able to get, at least in this world, from any other illu- 



100 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

sion of wealth which he has tried to make a source of pleasure and 
profit. 

The next point on which Mary evidently insisted was the arrange- 
ment for her private apartments, the apse, as distinguished from her 
throne-room, the choir; both being quite distinct from the hall, or 
reception-room of the public, which was the nave with its enlargements 
in the transepts. This arrangement marks the distinction between 
churches built as shrines for the deity and churches built as halls of 
worship for the public. The difference is chiefly in the apse, and the 
apse of Chartres is the most interesting of all apses from this point of 
view. 

The Virgin required chiefly these three things, or, if you like, 
these four: space, light, convenience; and colour decoration to unite 
and harmonize the whole. This concerns the interior; on the exterior 
she required statuary, and the only complete system of decorative 
sculpture that existed seems to belong to her churches: — Paris, 
Rheims, Amiens, and Chartres. Mary required all this magnificence 
at Chartres for herself alone, not for the public. As far as one can see 
into the spirit of the builders, Chartres was exclusively intended for 
the Virgin, as the Temple of Abydos was intended for Osiris. The wants 
of man, beyond a mere roof- cover, and perhaps space to some degree, 
enter to no very great extent into the problem of Chartres. Man came 
to render homage or to ask favours. The Queen received him in her pal- 
ace, where she alone was at home, and alone gave commands. 

The artist's second thought was to exclude from his work every- 
thing that could displease Mary; and since Mary differed from living 
queens only in infinitely greater majesty and refinement, the artist 
could admit only what pleased the actual taste of the great ladies who 
dictated taste at the Courts of France and England, which surrounded 
the little Court of the Counts of Chartres. What they were — these 
women of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries — we shall have to see 
or seek in other directions; but Chartres is perhaps the most magni- 



THE VIRGIN OF CHARTRES loi 

ficent and permanent monument they left of their taste, and we can 
begin here with learning certain things which they were not. 

In the first place, they were not in the least vague, dreamy, or 
mystical in a modern sense ; — far from it ! They seemed anxious only 
to throw the mysteries into a blaze of light; not so much physical, 
perhaps, — since they, like all women, liked moderate shadow for their 
toilettes, — but luminous in the sense of faith. There is nothing about 
Chartres that you would think mystical, who know your Lohengrin, 
Siegfried, and Parsifal. If you care to make a study of the whole liter- 
ature of the subject, read M. Male's ''Art ReligieuxduXIIP Siecle en 
France," and use it for a guide-book. Here you need only note how 
symbolic and how simple the sculpture is, on the portals and porches. 
Even what seems a grotesque or an abstract idea is no more than the 
simplest child's personification. On the walls you may have noticed 
the Ane qui vielle, — the ass playing the lyre; and on all the old churches 
you can see "bestiaries," as they were called, of fabulous animals, 
symbolic or not; but the symbolism is as simple as the realism of the 
oxen at Laon. It gave play to the artist in his effort for variety of dec- 
oration, and it amused the people, — probably the Virgin also was not 
above being amused ; — now and then it seems about to suggest what 
you would call an esoteric meaning, that is to say, a meaning which each 
one of us can consider private property reserved for our own amuse- 
ment, and from which the public is excluded; yet, in truth, in the Vir- 
gin's churches the public is never excluded, but invited. The Virgin 
even had the additional charm of the public that she was popularly 
supposed to have no very marked fancy for priests as such ; she was a 
queen, a woman, and a mother, functions, all, which priests could not 
perform. Accordingly, she seems to have had little taste for mysteries 
of any sort, and even the symbols that seem most mysterious were clear 
to every old peasant- woman in her church. The most pleasing and 
promising of them all is the woman's figure you saw on the front of the 
cathedral in Paris; her eyes bandaged; her head bent down; her crown 



102 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

falling; without cloak or royal robe; holding In her hand a guidon or 
banner with Its staff broken In more than one place. On the opposite 
pier stands another woman, with royal mantle, erect and commanding. 
The symbol is so graceful that one is quite eager to know its meaning; 
1 but every child in the Middle Ages would have Instantly told you that 
' the woman with the falling crown meant only the Jewish Synagogue, 
as the one with the royal robe meant the Church of Christ. 

Another matter for which the female taste seemed not much to care 
was theology in the metaphysical sense. Mary troubled herself little 
about theology except when she retired into the south transept with 
Pierre de Dreux. Even there one finds little said about the Trinity, 
always the most metaphysical subtlety of the Church. Indeed, you 
might find much amusement here in searching the cathedral for any 
distinct expression at all of the Trinity as a dogma recognized by Mary. 
One cannot take seriously the idea that the three doors, the three 
portals, and the three aisles express the Trinity, because, In the first 
place, there was no rule about it; churches might have what portals 
and aisles they pleased; both Paris and Bourges have five; the doors 
themselves are not allotted to the three members of the Trinity, nor 
are the portals; while another more serious objection Is that the side 
doors and aisles are not of equal importance with the central, but mere 
adjuncts and dependencies, so that the architect who had misled the 
Ignorant public into accepting so black a heresy would have deserved 
the stake, and would probably have gone to it. Even this suggestion 
of trinity is wanting In the transepts, which have only one aisle, and 
, In the choir, which has five, as well as five or seven chapels, and, as far 
as an ignorant mind can penetrate, no triplets whatever. Occasionally, 
no doubt, you will discover in some sculpture or window, a symbol of 
the Trinity, but this discovery itself amounts to an admission of its 
absence as a controlling idea, for the ordinary worshipper must have 
been at least as blind as we are, and to him, as to us. It would have 
seemed a wholly subordinate detail. Even If the Trinity, too, is any- 



THE VIRGIN OF CHARTRES 103 

where expressed, you will hardly find here an attempt to explain its 
metaphysical meaning — not even a mystic triangle. 

The church is wholly given up to the Mother and the Son. The 
Father seldom appears; the Holy Ghost still more rarely. At least, 
this is the impression made on an ordinary visitor who has no motive 
to be orthodox ; and it must have been the same with the thirteenth- 
century worshipper who came here with his mind absorbed in the per- 
fections of Mary. Chartres represents, not the Trinity, but the iden- 
tity of the Mother and Son. The Son represents the Trinity, which 
is thus absorbed in the Mother. The idea is not orthodox, but this is 
no affair of ours. The Church watches over its own. 

The Virgin's wants and tastes, positive and negative, ought now to 
be clear enough to enable you to feel the artist's sincerity in trying to 
satisfy them; but first you have still to convince yourselves of the 
people's sincerity in employing the artists. This point is the easiest 
of all, for the evidence is express. In the year 1 145 when the old fleche 
was begun, — the year before Saint Bernard preached the second 
crusade at Vezelay, — Abbot Haimon, of Saint- Pierre-sur-Dives in 
Normandy, wrote to the monks of Tutbury Abbey in England a famous 
letter to tell of the great work which the Virgin was doing in France 
and which began at the Church of Chartres. " Hujus sacrae institutionis 
ritus apud Carnotensem, ecclesiam est inchoatus." From Chartres 
it had spread through Normandy, where it produced among other 
things the beautiful spire which we saw at Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives. 
"Postremo per totam fere Normanniam longe lateque convaluit ac 
loca per singula Matri misericordiae dicata praecipue occupavit." The 
movement affected especially the places devoted to Mary, but ran 
through all Normandy, far and wide. Of all Mary's miracles, the best 
attested, next to the preservation of her church, is the building of it; 
not so much because it surprises us as because it surprised even more 
the people of the time and the men who were its instruments. Such 
deep popular movements are always surprising, and at Chartres the 



104 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

miracle seems to have occurred three times, coinciding more or less 
with the dates of the crusades, and taking the organization of a cru- 
sade, as Archibishop Hugo of Rouen described it in a letter to Bishop 
Thierry of Amiens. The most interesting part of this letter is the evi- 
dent astonishment of the writer, who might be talking to us to-day, 
so modern is he : — 

The inhabitants of Chartres have combined to aid in the construction of their 
church by transporting the materials; our Lord has rewarded their humble zeal 
by miracles which have roused the Normans to imitate the piety of their neigh- 
bours. . . . Since then the faithful of our diocese and of other neighbouring regions 
have formed associations for the same object; they admit no one into their com- 
pany unless he has been to confession, has renounced enmities and revenges, and 
has reconciled himself with his enemies. That done, they elect a chief, under whose 
direction they conduct their waggons in silence and with humility. 

The quarries at Bercheres-l'Eveque are about five miles from 
Chartres. The stone is excessively hard, and was cut in blocks of con- 
siderable size, as you can see for yourselves; blocks which required 
great effort to transport and lay in place. The work was done with 
feverish rapidity, as it still shows, but it is the solidist building of the 
age, and without a sign of weakness yet. The Abbot told, with more 
surprise than pride, of the spirit which was built into the cathedral 
with the stone : — 

Who has ever seen! — Who has ever heard tell, in times past, that powerful 
princes of the world, that men brought up in honour and in wealth, that nobles, 
men and women, have bent their proud and haughty necks to the harness of carts, 
and that, hke beasts of burden, they have dragged to the abode of Christ these 
waggons, loaded with wines, grains, oil, stone, wood, and all that is necessary for 
the wants of life, or for the construction of the church? But while they draw these 
burdens, there is one thing admirable to observe ; it is that often when a thousand 
persons and more are attached to the chariots, — so great is the difficulty, — yet 
they march in such silence that not a murmur is heard, and truly if one did not see 
the thing with one's eyes, one might believe that among such a multitude there 
was hardly a person present. When they halt on the road, nothing is heard but 
the confession of sins, and pure and suppliant prayer to God to obtain pardon. At 
the voice of the priests who exhort their hearts to peace, they forget all hatred, 
discord is thrown far aside, debts are remitted, the unity of hearts is established. 



THE VIRGIN OF CHARTRES 105 

But if any one is so far advanced in evil as to be unwilling to pardon an offender, 
or if he rejects the counsel of the priest who has piously advised him, his offering 
is instantly thrown from the wagon as impure, and he himself ignominiously and 
shamefully excluded from the society of the holy. There one sees the priests who 
preside over each chariot exhort every one to penitence, to confession of faults, to 
the resolution of better life! There one sees old people, young people, little chil- 
dren, calling on the Lord with a suppliant voice, and uttering to Him, from the depth 
of the heart, sobs and sighs with words of glory and praise! After the people, 
warned by the sound of trumpets and the sight of banners, have resumed their 
road, the march is made with such ease that no obstacle can retard it. . . . When 
they have reached the church they arrange the wagons about it like a spiritual 
camp, and during the whole night they celebrate the watch by hymns and can- 
ticles. On each waggon they light tapers and lamps ; they place there the infirm 
and sick, and bring them the precious relics of the Saints for their relief. After- 
wards the priests and clerics close the ceremony by processions which the people 
follow with devout heart, imploring the clemency of the Lord and of his Blessed 
Mother for the recovery of the sick. 

Of course, the Virgin was actually and constantly present during all 
this labour, and gave her assistance to it, but you would get no light 
on the architecture from listening to an account of her miracles, nor do 
they heighten the effect of popular faith. Without the conviction of 
her personal presence, men would not have been inspired; but, to us, 
it is rather the inspiration of the art which proves the Virgin's pres- 
ence, and we can better see the conviction of it in the work than in the 
words. Every day, as the work went on, the Virgin was present, di- 
recting the architects, and it is this direction that we are going to study, 
if you have now got a realizing sense of what it meant. Without this 
sense, the church is dead. Most persons of a deeply religious nature 
would tell you emphatically that nine churches out of ten actually 
were dead-born, after the thirteenth century, and that church archi- 
tecture became a pure matter of mechanism and mathematics; but that 
is a question for you to decide when you come to it ; and the pleasure 
consists not in seeing the death, but in feeling the life. 

Now let us look about! 



CHAPTER VII 

ROSES AND APSES 

LIKE all great churches, that are not mere storehouses of theology, 
Chartres expressed, besides whatever else it meant, an emotion, 
the deepest man ever felt, — the struggle of his own littleness to grasp 
the infinite. You may, if you like, figure in it a mathematic formula of 
infinity, — the broken arch, our finite idea of space ; the spire, pointing, 
with its converging lines, to unity beyond space; the sleepless, restless 
thrust of the vaults, telling the unsatisfied, incomplete, overstrained 
effort of man to rival the energy, intelligence, and purpose of God. 
Thomas Aquinas and the schoolmen tried to put it in words, but their 
Church is another chapter. I n act, all man' s work ends there ; — mathe- 
matics, physics, chemistry, dynamics, optics, every sort of machin- 
ery science may invent, — to this favour come at last, as religion and 
philosophy did before science was born. All that the centuries can 
is to express the idea differently : — a miracle or a dynamo ; a dome or 
a coal-pit; a cathedral or a world's fair; and sometimes to confuse the 
two expressions together. The world's fair tends more and more vigor- 
ously to express the thought of infinite energy ; the great cathedrals of 
the Middle Ages always reflected the industries and interests of a 
world's fair. Chartres showed it less than Laon or Paris, for Chartres 
was never a manufacturing town, but a shrine, such as Lourdes, where 
the Virgin was known to have done miracles, and had been seen in 
person; but still the shrine turned itself into a market and created 
valuable industries. Indeed, this was the chief objection which Saint 
Paul made to Ephesus and Saint Bernard to the cathedrals. They 
were in some ways more industrial than religious. The mere masonry 
and structure made a vast market for labour ; the fixed metalwork and 
woodwork were another; but the decoration was by far the greatest. 



ROSES AND APSES 107 

The wood-carving, the glass windows, the sculpture, inside and out, 
were done mostly in workshops on the spot, but besides these fixed 
objects, precious works of the highest perfection filled the church 
treasuries. Their money value was great then ; it is greater now. No 
world's fair is likely to do better to-day. After five hundred years 
of spoliation, these objects fill museums still, and are bought with 
avidity at every auction, at prices continually rising and quality 
steadily falling, until a bit of twelfth-century glass would be a trou- 
vaille like an emerald; a tapestry earlier than 1600 is not for mere 
tourists to hope; an enamel, a missal, a crystal, a cup, an embroidery 
of the Middle Ages belongs only to our betters, and almost invariably, 
if not to the State, to the rich Jews, whose instinctive taste has seized 
the whole field of art which rested on their degradation. Royalty and 
feudality spent their money rather on arms and clothes. The Church 
alone was universal patron, and the Virgin was the dictator of taste. 
With the Virgin's taste, during her regency, critics never find fault. 
One cannot know its whole magnificence, but one can accept it as a 
^^^tter of faith and trust, as one accepts all her other miracles without 
Cavilling over small details of fact. The period of eighteenth-century 
scepticism about such matters and the bourgeois taste of Voltaire and 
Diderot have long since passed, with the advent of a scientific taste 
still more miraculous; the whole world of the Virgin's art, catalogued in 
the " Dictionnaire du Mobilier Frangais" in six volumes by Viollet-le- 
Duc; narrated as history by M. Labarte, M. Molinier, M. Paul La- 
croix; catalogued in museums by M. du Sommerard and a score of 
others, in works almost as costly as the subjects, — all the vast va- 
riety of bric-a-brac, useful or ornamental, belonging to the Church, 
increased enormously by the insatiable, universal, private demands 
for imagery, in ivory, wood, metal, stone, for every room in every house, 
or hung about every neck, or stuck on every ha^taiade a market such 
as artists never knew before or since, and such as instantly explains 
to the practical American not only the reason for the Church's tenacity 



io8 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

of life, but also the inducements for its plunder. The Virgin especially 
required all the resources of art, and the highest. Notre Dame of 
Chartres would have laughed at Notre Dame of Paris if she had de- 
tected an economy in her robes; Notre Dame of Rheims or Rouen 
would have derided Notre Dame of Amiens if she had shown a femi- 
nine, domestic, maternal turn toward cheapness. The Virgin was never 
cheap. Her great ceremonies were as splendid as her rank of Queen 
in Heaven and on Earth required ; and as her procession wound its way 
along the aisles, through the crowd of her subjects, up to the high 
altar, it was impossible then, and not altogether easy now, to resist 
the rapture of her radiant presence. Many a young person, and now 
and then one who is not in first youth, witnessing the sight in the 
religious atmosphere of such a church as this, without a suspicion of 
susceptibility, has suddenly seen what Paul saw on the road to Damas- 
cus, and has fallen on his face with the crowd, grovelling at the foot 
of the Cross, which, for the first time in his life, he feels. 

If you want to know what churches were made for, come down 
here on some great festival of the Virgin, and give yourself up to i||^ 
but come alone ! That kind of knowledge cannot be taught and can se^^ 
dom be shared. We are not now seeking religion ; indeed, true religion 
generally comes unsought. We are trying only to feel Gothic art. For 
us, the world is not a schoolroom or a pulpit, but a stage, and the stage 
is the highest yet seen on earth. In this church the old Romanesque 
leaps into the Gothic under our eyes; of a sudden, between the portal 
and the shrine, the infinite rises into a new expression, always a rare 
and excellent miracle in thought. The two expressions are nowhere far 
apart; not further than the Mother from the Son. The new artist drops 
unwillingly the hand of his father or his grandfather; he looks back, 
from every corner of his own work, to see whether it goes with the 
old. He will not pij/j^ith. the western portal or the lancet windows; 
he holds close to the round columns of the choir; he would have kept 
the round arch if he could, but the round arch was unable to do the 



ROSES AND APSES 109 

work; it could not rise; so he broke it, lifted the vaulting, threw out 
flying buttresses, and satisfied the Virgin's wish. 

The matter of Gothic vaulting, with its two weak points, the flying 
buttress and the false, wooden shelter-roof, is the b^te noire of the 
Beaux Arts. The duty of defence does not lie on tourists, who are at 
best hardly able to understand what it matters whether a wall is but- 
tressed without or within, and whether a roof is single or double. No 
one objects to the dome of Saint Peter's. No one finds fault with the 
Pont Neuf. Yet it is true that the Gothic architect showed contempt 
for facts. Since he could not support a heavy stone vault on his light 
columns, he built the lightest possible stone vault and protected it 
with a wooden" shelter-roof which constantly burned. The lightened 
vaults were still too heavy for the walls and columns, so the architect 
threw out buttress beyond buttress resting on separate foundations, 
exposed to extreme inequalities of weather, and liable to multiplied 
chances of accident. The results were certainly disastrous. The roofs 
burned; the walls yielded. 

, Flying buttresses were not a necessity. The Merveille had none; 
the Angevin school rather affected to do without them ; Albi had none ; 
Assisi stands up independent; but they did give support wherever the 
architect wanted it and nowhere else; they were probably cheap; and 
they were graceful. Whatever expression they gave to a church, at 
least it was not that of a fortress. Amiens and Albi are different reli- 
gions. The expression concerns us; the construction concerns the Beaux 
Arts. The problem of permanent equilibrium which distresses the 
builder of arches is a technical matter which does not worry, but only 
amuses, us who sit in the audience and look with delight at the theatri- 
cal stage-decoration of the Gothic vault; the astonishing feat of build- 
ing up a skeleton of stone ribs and vertebrae, on which every pound of 
weight is adjusted, divided, and carried down from level to level till 
it touches ground at a distance as a bird would Might. If any stone in 
any part, from apex to foundation, weathers or gives way, the whole 



no MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

must yield, and the charge for repairs is probably great, but, on the 
best building the Ecole des Beaux Arts can build, the charge for 
repairs is not to be wholly ignored, and at least the Cathedral of 
Chartres, in spite of terribly hard usage, is as solid to-day as when it 
was built, and as plumb, without crack or crevice. Even the towering 
fragment at Beauvais, poorly built from the first, which has broken 
down oftener than most Gothic structures, and seems ready to crumble 
again whenever the wind blows over its windy plains, has managed to 
survive, after a fashion, six or seven hundred years, which is all that 
our generation had a right to ask. 

The vault of Beauvais is nearly one hundred and sixty feet liigh 
(48 metres), and was cheaply built. The vault of Saint Peter's at Rome 
is nearly one hundred and fifty feet (45 metres). That of Amiens is 
one hundred and forty-four feet (44 metres). Rheims, Bourges, and 
Chartres are nearly the same height ; at the entrance, one hundred and 
twenty-two feet. Paris is one hundred and ten feet. The Abbe Bulteau 
is responsible for these measurements; but at Chartres, as in several 
very old churches, the nave slopes down to the entrance, because — 
as is said — pilgrims came in such swarms that they were obliged to 
sleep in the church, and the nave had to be sluiced with water to clean 
it. The true height of Chartres, at the croisee of nave and transept, 
is as near as possible one hundred and twenty feet (36.55 metres). 

The measured height is the least interest of a church. The archi- 
tect's business is to make a small building look large, and his failures 
are in large buildings which he makes to look small. One chief beauty 
of the Gothic is to exaggerate height, and one of its most curious quali- 
ties is its success in imposing an illusion of size. Without leaving the 
heart of Paris any one can study this illusion in the two great churches 
of Notre Dame and Saint-Sulpice ; for Saint-Sulpice is as lofty as 
Notre Dame in vaulting, and larger in its other dimensions, besides 
being, in its style, a fine building; yet its Roman arches show, as if 
they were of the eleventh century, why the long, clean, unbroken, 




CHARTRES: THE NAVE 



ROSES AND APSES in 

refined lines of the Gothic, curving to points, and leading the eye with 
a sort of compulsion to the culminating point above, should have made 
an architectural triumph that carried all Europe off its feet with de- 
light. The world had seen nothing to approach it except, perhaps, in 
the dome of Sancta Sophia in Constantinople ; and the discovery came 
at a moment when Europe was making its most united and desperate 
struggle to attain the kingdom of Heaven. 

According to Viollet-le-Duc, Chartres was the final triumph of the 
experiment on a very great scale, for Chartres has never been altered * 
and never needed to be strengthened. The flying buttresses of Chartres 
answered their purpose, and if it were not a matter of pure construction 
it would be worth while to read what Viollet-le-Duc says about them 
(article, "Arcs-boutants"). The vaulting above is heavy, about fif- 
teen inches thick; the buttressing had also to be heavy; and to lighten 
it, the architect devised an amusing sort of arcades, applied on his out- 
side buttresses. Throughout the church, everything was solid beyond 
all later custom, so that architects would have to begin by a study 
of the crypt which came down from the eleventh century so strongly 
built that it still carries the church without a crack in its walls ; but if 
we went down into it, we should understand nothing; so we will begin, 
as we did outside, at the front. 

A single glance shows what trouble the architect had with the old 
fagade and towers, and what temptation to pull them all down. One 
cannot quite say that he has spoiled his own church in trying to save 
what he could of the old, but if he did not quite spoil it, he saved it 
only by the exercise of an amount of intelligence that we shall never 
learn enough to feel our incapacity to understand. True ignorance 
approaches the infinite more nearly than any amount of knowledge 
can do, and, in our case, ignorance is fortified by a certain element of 
nineteenth-century indifference which refuses to be interested in what 
it cannot understand; a violent reaction from the thirteenth century 
which cared little to comprehend anything except the incomprehen- 



112 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

sible. The architect at Chartres was required by the Virgin to provide 
more space for her worshippers within the church, without destroy- 
ing the old portal and fleche which she loved. That this order came 
directly from the Virgin, may be taken for granted. At Chartres, one 
sees everywhere the Virgin, and nowhere any rival authority; one sees 
her give orders, and architects obey them ; but very rarely a hesitation 
as though the architect were deciding for himself. In his western front, 
the architect has obeyed orders so literally that he has not even taken 
the trouble to apologize for leaving unfinished the details which, if he 
had been responsible for them, would have been his anxious care. He 
has gone to the trouble of moving the heavy doorways forward, so that 
the chapels in the towers, which were meant to open on a porch, now 
open into the nave, and the nave itself has, in appearance, two more 
spans than in the old church ; but the work shows blind obedience, as 
though he were doing his best to please the Virgin without trying to 
please himself. Probably he could in no case have done much to help 
the side aisles in their abrupt collision with the solid walls of the two 
towers, but he might at least have brought the vaulting of his two new 
bays, in the nave, down to the ground, and finished it. The vaulting 
is awkward in these two bays, and yet he has taken great trouble to 
effect what seems at first a small matter. Whether the great rose win- 
dow was an afterthought or not can never be known, but any one can 
see with a glass, and better on the architectural plan, that the vault- 
ing of the main church was not high enough to admit the great rose, 
and that the architect has had to slope his two tower-spans upward. 
So great is the height that you cannot see this difference of level 
very plainly even with a glass, but on the plans it seems to amount to 
several feet; perhaps a metre. The architect has managed to deceive 
our eyes, in order to enlarge the rose ; but you can see as plainly as 
though he were here to tell you, that, like a great general, he has 
concentrated his whole energy on the rose, because the Virgin has 
told him that the rose symbolized herself, and that the light and 



ROSES AND APSES 113 

splendour of her appearance in the west were to redeem all his 
awkwardnesses. 

Of course this idea of the Virgin's interference sounds to you a mere 
bit of fancy, and that is an account which may be settled between the 
Virgin and you ; but even twentieth-century eyes can see that the rose 
redeems everything, dominates everything, and gives character to the 
whole church. 

In view of the difficulties which faced the artist, the rose is inspired 
genius, — the kind of genius which Shakespeare showed when he took 
some other man's play, and adapted it. Thus far, it shows its power 
chiefly by the way it comes forward and takes possession of the west 
front, but if you want a foot-rule to measure by, you may mark that 
the old, twelfth-century lancet-windows below it are not exactly in its 
axis. At the outset, in the original plan of 1090, or thereabouts, the 
old tower — the southern tower — was given greater width than the 
northern. Such inequalities were common in the early churches, and 
so is a great deal of dispute in modern books whether they were acci- 
dental or intentional, while no one denies that they are amusing. In 
these towers the difference is not great, — perhaps fourteen or fifteen 
inches, — but it caused the architect to correct it, in order to fit his 
front to the axis of the church, by throwing his entrance six or seven 
inches to the south, and narrowing to that extent the south door and 
south lancet. The effect was bad, even then, and went far to ruin the 
south window; but when, after the fire of 1194, the architect inserted 
his great rose, filling every inch of possible space between the lancet 
and the arch of the vault, he made another correction which threw his 
rose six or seven inches out of axis with the lancets. Not one person in 
a hundred thousand would notice it, here in the interior, so completely 
are we under the control of the artist and the Virgin ; but it is a meas- 
ure of the power of the rose. 

Looking farther, one sees that the rose-motive, which so dominates 
the west front, is carried round the church, and comes to another 



114 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

outburst of splendour in the transepts. This leads back to fenestra- 
tion on a great scale, which is a terribly ambitious flight for tourists; 
all the more, because here the tourist gets little help from the architect, 
who, in modern times, has seldom the opportunity to study the sub- 
ject at all, and accepts as solved the problems of early Gothic fenestra- 
tion. One becomes pedantic and pretentious at the very sound of the 
word, which is an intolerable piece of pedantry in itself; but Chartres 
is all windows, and its windows were as triumphant as its Virgin, and 
were one of her miracles. One can no more overlook the windows of 
Chartres than the glass which is in them. We have already looked at 
the windows of Mantes; we have seen what happened to the windows 
at Paris. Paris had at one leap risen twenty-five feet higher than Noyon, 
and even at Noyon, the architect, about 1150, had been obliged to 
invent new fenestration. Paris and Mantes, twenty years later, made 
another effort, which proved a failure. Then the architect of Chartres, 
in 1 195, added ten feet more to his vault, and undertook, once for all, 
to show how a great cathedral should be lighted. As an architectural 
problem, it passes far beyond our powers of understanding, even when 
solved; but we can always turn to see what the inevitable Viollet-le- 
Duc says about its solution at Chartres : — 

Toward the beginning of the thirteenth century, the architect of the Cathedral 
of Chartres sought out entirely new window combinations to light the nave from 
above. Below, in the side aisles he kept to the customs of the times; that is, he 
opened pointed windows which did not wholly fill the spaces between the piers; 
he wanted, or was willing to leave here below, the effect of a wall. But in the upper 
part of his building we see that he changed the system ; he throws a round arch 
directly across from one pier to the next; then, in the enormous space which 
remains within each span, he inserts two large pointed windows surmounted by 
a great rose. . . . We recognize in this construction of Notre Dame de Chartres 
a boldness, a force, which contrast with the fumbling of the architects in the lie 
de France and Champagne. For the first time one sees at Chartres the builder deal 
frankly with the clerestory, or upper fenestration, occupying the whole width of 
the arches, and taking the arch of the vault as the arch of the window. Simplicity 
of construction, beauty in form, strong workmanship, structure true and solid, 
judicious choice of material, all the characteristics of good work, unite in this 
magnificent specimen of architecture at the beginning of the thirteenth century. 



ROSES AND APSES 115 

Viollet-le-Duc does not eall attention to a score of other matters 
which the architect must have had in his mind, such as the distribu- 
tion of light, and the relations of one arrangement with another : the 
nave with the aisles, and both with the transepts, and all with the 
choir. Following him, we must take the choir separately, and the aisles 
and chapels of the apse also. One cannot hope to understand all the 
experiments and refinements of the artist, either in their successes or 
their failures, but, with diffidence, one may ask one's self whether the 
beauty of the arrangement, as compared with the original arrange- 
ment in Paris, did not consist in retaining the rose-motive throughout, 
while throwing the whole upper wall into window. Triumphant as the 
clerestory windows are, they owe their charm largely to their roses, as 
you see by looking at the same scheme applied on a larger scale on the 
transept fronts; and then, by taking stand under the croisee, and look- 
ing at all in succession as a whole. 

The rose window was not Gothic but Romanesque, and needed a 
great deal of coaxing to feel at home within the pointed arch. At first, 
the architects felt the awkwardness so strongly that they avoided it 
wherever they could. In the beautiful fagade of Laon, one of the chief 
beauties is the setting of the rose under a deep round arch. The 
western roses of Mantes and Paris are treated in the same way, al- 
though a captious critic might complain that their treatment is not so 
effective or so logical. Rheims boldly imprisoned the roses within the 
pointed arch ; but Amiens, toward 1240, took refuge in the same square 
exterior setting that was preferred, in 1200, here at Chartres; and in 
the interior of Amiens the round arch of the rose is the last vault of the 
nave, seen through a vista of pointed vaults, as it is here. All these are 
supposed to be among the chief beauties of the Gothic fagade, al- 
though the Gothic architect, if he had been a man of logic, would have 
clung to his lines, and put a pointed window in his front, as In fact he 
did at Coutances. He felt the value of the rose in art, and perhaps still 
more in religion, for the rose was Mary's emblem. One is fairly sure 



ii6 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

that the great Chartres rose of the west front was put there to please 
her, since it was to be always before her eyes, the most conspicuous 
object she wowld see from the high altar, and therefore the most care- 
fully considered ornament in the whole church, outside the choir. The 
mere size proves the importance she gave it. The exterior diameter is 
nearly forty-four feet (13.36 metres). The nave of Chartres is, next 
perhaps to the nave of Angers, the widest of all Gothic naves ; about 
fifty- three feet (16.31 metres) ; and the rose takes every inch it can get 
of this enormous span. The value of the rose, among architects of the 
time, was great, since it was the only part of the church that Villard de 
Honnecourt sketched; and since his time, it has been drawn and re- 
drawn, described and commented by generations of architects till it 
has become as classic as the Parthenon. 

Yet this Chartres rose is solid, serious, sedate, to a degree unusual 
in its own age ; it is even more Romanesque than the pure Romanesque 
roses. At Beauvais you must stop a moment to look at a Romanesque 
rose on the transept of the Church of Saint-Etienne; Viollet-le-Duc 
mentions it, with a drawing (article, " Pignon "), as not earlier than the 
year 1 100, therefore about a century earlier than the rose of Chartres; 
it is not properly a rose, but a wheel of fortune, with figures climbing 
up and falling over. Another supposed twelfth-century rose is at 
Etampes, which goes with that of Laon and Saint-Leu-d'Esserent and 
Mantes. The rose of Chartres is so much the most serious of them all 
that Viollet-le-Duc has explained it by its material, — the heavy stone 
of Bercheres; — but the material was not allowed to affect the great 
transept roses, and the architect made his material yield to his object 
wherever he thought it worth while. Standing under the central 
croisee, you can see all three roses by simply turning your head. That 
on the north, the Rose de France, was built, or planned, between 1200 
and 1 2 10, in the reign of Philip Augustus, since the porch outside, 
which would be a later construction, was begun by 1212. The Rose de 
France is the same in diameter as the western rose, but lighter, and 



ROSES AND APSES 117 

built of lighter stone. Opposite the Rose de France stands, on the 
south front, Pierre Mauclerc's Rose de Dreux, of the same date, with 
the same motive, but even lighter; more like a rose and less like a 
wheel. All three roses must have been planned at about the same time, 
perhaps by the same architect, within the same workshop; yet the 
western rose stands quite apart, as though it had been especially 
designed to suit the twelfth-century fagade and portal which it rules. 
Whether this was really the artist's idea is a question that needs the 
artist to answer; but that this is the effect, needs no expert to prove; it 
stares one in the face. Within and without, one feels that the twelfth- 
century spirit is respected and preserved with the same_religious feel- 
ing which obliged the architect to injure his own work by sparing that 
of his grandfathers. 

Conspicuous, then, in the west front are two feelings: — respect for 
the twelfth-century work, and passion for the rose fenestration ; both 
subordinated to the demand for light. If it worries you to have to 
believe that these three things are in fact one; that the architect is 
listening, like the stone Abraham, for orders from the Virgin, while he 
caresses and sacrifices his child ; that Mary and not her architects built 
this fagade ; if the divine intention seems to you a needless imperti- 
nence, you can soon get free from it by going to any of the later 
churches, where you will not be forced to see any work but that of the 
architect's compasses. According to Viollet-le-Duc, the inspiration 
ceased about 1250, or, as the Virgin would have dated it, on the death 
of Blanche of Castile in 1252. The work of Chartres, where her own 
hand is plainly shown, belongs in feeling, if not in execution, to the 
last years of the twelfth century (i 195-1200). The great western 
rose which gives the motive for the whole decoration and is repeated 
in the great roses of the transepts, marks the Virgin's will, — the 
taste and knowledge of "cele qui la rose est des roses," or, if you pre- 
fer the Latin of Adam de Saint- Victor, the hand of her who is "Super 
rosam rosida." 



ii8 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

All this is easy; but if you really cannot see the hand of Mary 
herself in these broad and public courts, which were intended, not for 
her personal presence, but for the use of her common people, you had 
better stop here, and not venture into the choir. Great halls seem to 
have been easy architecture. Naves and transepts were not often fail- 
ures; fagades and even towers and fleches are invariably more or less 
successful because they are more or less balanced, mathematical, cal- 
culable products of reason and thought. The most serious difficulties 
began only with the choir, and even then did not become desperate 
until the architect reached the curve of the apse, with its impossible 
vaultings, its complicated lines, its cross-thrusts, its double problems, 
internal and external, its defective roofing and unequal lighting. A 
perfect Gothic apse was impossible ; an apse that satisfied perfectly its 
principal objects was rare; the simplest and cheapest solution was to 
have no apse at all, and that was the English scheme, which was tried 
also at Laon; a square, flat wall and window. If the hunt for Norman 
towers offered a summer's amusement, a hunt for apses would offer an 
/ education, but it would lead far out of France. Indeed, it would be 
simpler to begin at once with Sancta Sophia at Constantinople, San 
Vitale at Ravenna and Monreale at Palermo, and the churches at 
Torcello and Murano, and San Marco at Venice; and admit that no 
device has ever equalled the startling and mystical majesty of the 
Byzantine half-dome, with its marvellous mosaic Madonna dominating 
the church, from the entrance, with her imperial and divine presence. 
Unfortunately, the northern churches needed light, and the northern 
, architects turned their minds to a desperate effort for a new apse. 
The scheme of the cathedral at Laon seems to have been rejected 
unanimously; the bare, flat wall at the end of the choir was an eyesore; 
it was quite bad enough at the end of the nave, and became annoying 
at the end of the transepts, so that at Noyon and Soissons the archi- 
tect, with a keen sense of interior form, had rounded the transept ends; 
but, though external needs might require a square transept, the unin- 



ROSES AND APSES 



119 



telHgence of the flat wall became insufferable at the east end. Neither 
did the square choir suit the church ceremonies and processions, or 
offer the same advantages of arrangement, as the French understood 
them. With one voice, the French architects seem to have rejected the 
Laon experiment, and turned back to a solution taken directly from 
the Romanesque. 

Quite early — in the eleventh century — a whole group of churches 
had been built in Auvergne, — at Clermont and Issoire, for example, 
— possibly by one architect, with a 
circular apse, breaking out into five 
apsidal chapels. Tourists who get 
down as far south as Toulouse see 
another example of this Romanesque 
apse in the famous Church of Saint- 
Sernin, of the twelfth century; and 
few critics take offence at one's liking 
it. Indeed, as far as concerns the ex- 
terior, one might even risk thinking 
it more charming than the exterior of 

any Gothic apse ever built. Many of these Romanesque apses of the 
eleventh and twelfth centuries still remain in France, showing them- 
selves in unsuspected parish churches, here and there, but always a 
surprise for their quiet, unobtrusive grace, making a harmony with the 
Romanesque tower, if there is one, into which they rise, as at Saint- 
Sernin; but all these churches had only one aisle, and, in the interior, 
there came invariable trouble when the vaults rose in height. The 
architect of Chartres, in 1200, could get no direct help from these, or 
even from Paris which was a beautifully perfect apse, but had no 
apsidal chapels. The earliest apse that could have served as a sugges- 
tion for Chartres — or, at least, as a point of observation for us — 
was that of the Abbey Church of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, which 
we went to see in Paris, and which is said to date from about 1150. 




Saint-Martin-des-Champs 




120 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

Here is a circular choir, surrounded by two rows of columns, irregularly 
spaced, with circular chapels outside, which seems to have been more 
or less what the architect of Chartres, for the Virgin's purposes, had 
set his heart on obtaining. Closely following the scheme of Saint- 

Martin-des-Champs 
came the scheme of 
the Abbey Church at 
Vezelay, built about 
1 160-80. Here the 
vaulting sprang di- 
rectly from the last 
arch of the choir, as 
is shown on the plan, 
and bearing first on 

.w the light columns of 

Vkzelay ^ 

the choir, which were 
evenly spaced, then fell on a row of heavier columns outside, which 
were also evenly spaced, and came to rest at last on massive piers, 
between which were five circular chapels. The plan shows at a glance 
that this arrangement stretched the second row of columns far apart, 
and that a church much larger than Vezelay would need to space 
them so much farther apart that the arch uniting them would have 
to rise indefinitely; while, if beyond this, another aisle were added 
outside, the piers finally would require impossible vaulting. 

The problem stood thus when the great cathedrals were undertaken, 
and the architect of Paris boldly grappled with the double aisle on a 
scale requiring a new scheme. Here, in spite of the most virtuous 
resolutions not to be technical, we must attempt a technicality, 
because without it, one of the most interesting eccentricities of Char- 
tres would be lost. Once more, Viollet-le-Duc: — 

As the architect did not want to give the interior bays of the apse spaces between 
the columns (AA.) less than that of the parallel bays (BB), it followed that the first 



ROSES AND APSES 



121 



radiating bay gave a first space (LMGH) which was difficult to vault, and a second 
space (HGEF) which was impossible ; for how establish an arch from F to E? Even 
if round, its key would have risen much higher than the key of the pointed archi- 
volt LM. As the second radiating bay opened out still wider, the difficulty was 
increased. The builder therefore inserted the two intermediate pillars O and P 
between the columns of the second aisle (H, G, and I) ; which he supported, in the 
outside wall of the church, by one corresponding pier (Q) in the first bay of the 
apse, and by two similar piers (R and S) in the second bay. 

"There is no need to point out," continued Viollet-Ie-Duc, as though 
he much suspected that there might be need of pointing out, "what 
skill this system showed and how much 
the art of architecture had already 
been developed in the lie de France 
toward the end of the twelfth cen- 
tury; to what an extent the unity of 
arrangement and style preoccupied the 
artists of that province." 

In fact, the arrangement seems 
mathematically and technically per- 
fect. At all events, we know too little 
to criticize it. Yet one would much 
like to be told why it was not repeated 
by any other architect or in any other 
church. Apparently the Parisians them- 
selves were not quite satisfied with it, 
since they altered it a hundred years later, in 1296, in order to build 
out chapels between the piers. As the architects of each new cathe- 
dral had, in the interval, insisted on apsidal chapels, one may venture 
to guess that the Paris scheme hampered the services. 

At Chartres the church services are Mary's own tastes; the church 
is Mary; and the chapels are her private rooms. She was not pleased 
with the arrangements made for her in her palace at Paris ; they were 
too architectural; too regular and mathematical; too popular; too 




Notre Dame de Paris 



122 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



impersonal ; and she rather abruptly ordered her architect at Chartres 
to go back to the old arrangement. The apse at Paris was hardly 

covered with its leading be- 
fore the architect of Chartres 
adopted a totally new plan, 
which, according to Viollet- 
le-Duc, does him little credit, 
but which was plainly im- 
posed on him, like the twelfth- 
century portal. Not only had 
it nothing of the mathemati- 
cal correctness and precision 
of the Paris scheme, easy to 
understand and imitate, but it 
carried even a sort of violence 
— a wrench — in its system, 
as though the Virgin had 
said, with her grand Byzan- 
tine air: — I will it! 

"At Chartres," said Viol- 
let-le-Duc, "the choir of the Cathedral presents a plan which does 
no great honour to its architect. There is want of accord between 
the circular apse and the parallel sides of the sanctuary; the spac- 
ings of the columns of the second collateral are loose {laches) ; the 
vaults quite poorly combined; and in spite of the great width of 
the spaces between the columns of the second aisle, the architect had 
still to narrow those between the interior columns." 

The plan shows that, from the first, the architect must have delib- 
erately rejected the Paris scheme; he must have begun by narrowing 
the spaces between his inner columns; then, with a sort of violence, 
he fitted on his second row of columns; and, finally, he showed his 
motive by constructing an outer wall of an original or unusual shape. 




Chartres 



ROSES AND APSES 



123 



Any woman would see at once the secret of all this ingenuity and ef- 
fort. The Chartres apse, enormous in size and width, is exquisitely 
lighted. Here, as everywhere throughout the church, the windows 
give the law, but here they actually take place of law. The Virgin her- 
self saw to the lighting of her own boudoir. According to Viollet-le- 
Duc, Chartres differs from all the other great cathedrals by being built 
not for its nave or even for its choir, but for its apse; it was planned 
not for the people or the court, but for the Queen ; not a church but 
a shrine; and the shrine is the apse where the Queen arranged her 
light to please herself and not her architect, who had already been 
sacrificed at the western 
portal and who had a free 
hand only in the nave 
and transepts where the 
Queen never went, and 
which, from her own 
apartment, she did not 
even see. 

This is, in effect, what 
Viollet-le-Duc says in 
his professional language, 
which is perhaps — or 
sounds — more reasona- 
ble to tourists, whose 
imaginations are hardly 
equal to the effort of fan- 
cying a real deity. Per- 
haps, indeed, one might 
get so high as to imagine 
a real Bishop of Laon, 
who should have ordered his architect to build an enormous hall of 
religion, to rival the immense abbeys of the day, and to attract the 




Laon 



124 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



people, as though it were a clubroom. There they were to see all 

the great sights ; church cere- 
monies; theatricals; political 
functions ; there they were to 
do business, and frequent 
society. They were to feel at 
home in their church because 
it was theirs, and did not 
belong to a priesthood or to 
Rome. Jealousy of Rome was 
a leading motive of Gothic 
architecture, and Rome re- 
paid it in full. The Bishop 
of Laon conceded at least a 
transept to custom or tradi- 
tion, but the Archbishop of 
Bourges abolished even the 
transept, and the great hall 
had no special religious ex- 
pression except in the circular apse with its chapels which Laon 
had abandoned. One can hardly decide whether Laon or Bourges is 
the more popular, indus- 
trial, political, or, in other 
words, the less religious; 
but the Parisians, as the 
plan of Viollet-le-Duc has 
shown, were quite as ad- 
vanced as either, and 
only later altered their 
scheme into one that pro- 
vided chapels for religious 
service. Amiens 




Bourges 




ROSES AND APSES 



125 



Amiens and Beauvais have each seven chapels, but only one aisle, 
so that they do not belong in the same class with the apses of Paris, 
Bourges, and Chartres, though the plans are worth studying for 
comparison, since they show how many-sided the problem was, and 
how far from satisfied the architects were with their own schemes. 
The most interesting of all, for comparison with Chartres, is Le 
Mans, where the apsidal chapels are carried to fanaticism, while 
the vaulting seems to be reasonable enough, and the double aisle suc- 
cessfully managed, if Viollet-Ie-Duc permits ignorant people to form 
an opinion on architectural 
dogma. For our purposes, 
the architectural dogma 
may stand, and the Paris 
scheme may be taken for 
granted, as alone correct and 
orthodox; all that Viollet- 
le-Duc teaches is that the 
. Chartres scheme is unortho- 
dox, not to say heretical; 
and this is the point on 
which his words are most 
interesting. 

The church at Chartres 
belonged not to the people, 
not to the priesthood, and 
not even to Rome; it be- 
longed to the Virgin. " Here 
the religious influence ap- 
pears wholly; three large 
chapels in the apse; four 

others less pronounced; double aisles of great width round the choir; 
vast transepts ! Here the church ceremonial could display all its pomp ; 




Beauvais 



126 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



the choir, more than at Paris, more than at Bourges, more than at 
Soissons, and especially more than at Laon, is the principal object; for 
it, the church is built." 
One who is painfully conscious of ignorance, and who never would 




Le Mans 



dream of suggesting a correction to anybody, may not venture to sug- 
gest an idea of any sort to an architect; but if it were allowed to para- 
phrase Viollet-le-Duc's words into a more or less emotional or twelfth- 
century form, one might say, after him, that, compared with Paris 
or Laon, the Chartres apse shows the same genius that is shown 
in the Chartres rose ; the same large mind that overrules, — the same 
strong will that defies difficulties. The Chartres apse is as entertaining 



ROSES AND APSES 



127 



as all the other Gothic apses together, because it overrides the 
architect. You may, if you really have no imagination whatever, 
reject the idea that the Virgin herself made the plan; the feebleness 
of our fancy is now congenital, organic, beyond stimulant or strych- 




Chartres 



nine, and we shrink like sensitive-plants from the touch of a vision 
or spirit; but at least one can still sometimes feel a woman's taste, 
and in the apse of Chartres one feels nothing else. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE TWELFTH-CENTURY GLASS 

AT last we are face to face with the crowning glory of Chartres. 
Other churches have glass, — quantities of it, and very fine, — 
but we have been trying to catch a glimpse of the glory which stands 
behind the glass of Chartres, and gives it quality and feeling of its 
own. For once the architect is useless and his explanations are pitiable; 
the painter helps still less ; and the decorator, unless he works in glass, 
is the poorest guide of all, while, if he works in glass, he is sure to lead 
wrong; and all of them may toil until Pierre Mauclerc's stone Christ 
comes to life, and condemns them among the unpardonable sinners on 
the southern portal, but neither they nor any other artist will ever 
create another Chartres. You had better stop here, once for all, unless 
you are willing to feel that Chartres was made what it is, not by the 
artist, but by the Virgin. 

If this imperial presence is stamped on the architecture and the 
sculpture with an energy not to be mistaken, it radiates through the 
glass with a light and colour that actually blind the true servant of 
Mary. One becomes, sometimes, a little incoherent in talking about 
it; one is ashamed to be as extravagant as one wants to be; one has no 
business to labour painfully to explain and prove to one's self what is 
as clear as the sun in the sky; one loses temper in reasoning about what 
can only be felt, and what ought to be felt instantly, as it was in the 
twelfth century, even by the truie qui file and the ane qui vielle. Any 
one should feel it that wishes; any one who does not wish to feel it can 
let it alone. Still, it may be that not one tourist in a hundred — per- 
haps not one in a thousand of the English-speaking race — does feel 
it, or can feel it even when explained to him, for we have lost many 
senses. 



THE TWELFTH-CENTURY GLASS 129 

Therefore, let us plod on, laboriously proving God, although, even 
to Saint Bernard and Pascal, God was incapable of proof; and using 
such material as the books furnish for help. It is not much. The 
French have been shockingly negligent of their greatest artistic glory. 
One knows not even where to seek. One must go to the National 
Library and beg as a special favour permission to look at the monu- 
mental work of M. Lasteyrie, if one wishes to make even a beginning 
of the study of French glass. Fortunately there exists a fragment of 
a great work which the Government began, but never completed, upon 
Chartres; and another, quite indispensable, but not official, upon 
Bourges; while Viollet-le-Duc's article "Vi trail" serves as guide to 
the whole. Ottin's book "Le Vitrail" is convenient. Male's volume 
"L'Art Religieux" is essential. In English, Westlake's "History of 
Design ' is helpful. Perhaps, after reading all that is readable, the 
best hope will be to provide the best glasses with the largest possible 
field; and, choosing an hour when the church is empty, take seat 
about halfway up the nave, facing toward the western entrance with 
a morning light, so that the glass of the western windows shall not 
stand in direct sun. 

The glass of the three lancets is the oldest in the cathedral. If the 
portal beneath it, with the sculpture, was built in the twenty or thirty 
years before 11 50, the glass could not be much later. It goes with 
the Abbe Suger's glass at Saint-Denis, which was surely made as early 
as 1140-50, since the Abbe was a long time at work on it, before he 
died in 1152. Their perfection proves, what his biographer asserted, 
that the Abbe Suger spent many years as well as much money on his 
windows at Saint-Denis, and the specialists affirm that the three lancets 
at Chartres are quite as good as what remains of Suger's work. Viollet- 
le-Duc and M. Paul Durand, the Government expert, are positive that 
this glass is the finest ever made, as far as record exists ; and that the 
northern lancet representing the Tree of Jesse stands at the head of all 
glasswork whatever. The windows claim, therefore, to be the most 



130 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

splendid colour decoration the world ever saw, since no other material, 
neither silk nor gold, and no opaque colour laid on with a brush, can 
compare with translucent glass, and even the Ravenna mosaics or 
Chinese porcelains are darkness beside them. 

The claim may not be modest, but it is none of ours. Viollet-le- 
Duc must answer for his own sins, and he chose the lancet window of 
the Tree of Jesse for the subject of his lecture on glass in general, as 
the most complete and perfect example of this greatest decorative 
art. Once more, in following him, one is dragged, in spite of one's self, 
into technique, and, what is worse, into a colour world whose technique 
was forgotten five hundred years ago. Viollet-le-Duc tried to recover 
it. "After studying our best French windows," he cautiously suggests 
that "one might maintain," as their secret of harmony, that "the first 
condition for an artist in glass is to know how to manage blue. The 
blue is the light in windows, and light has value only by opposition." 
The radiating power of blue is, therefore, the starting-point, and on 
this matter Viollet-le-Duc has much to say which a student would 
need to master; but a tourist never should study, or he ceases to be a 
tourist; and it is enough for us if we know that, to get the value they 
wanted, the artists hatched their blues with lines, covered their sur- 
face with figures as though with screens, and tied their blue within 
its own field with narrow circlets of white or yellow, which, in their 
turn, were beaded to fasten the blue still more firmly in its place. We 
have chiefly to remember the law that blue is light : — 

But also it Is that luminous colour which gives value to all others. If you com- 
pose a window in which there shall be no blue, you will get a dirty or dull (blafard) 
or crude surface which the eye will instantly avoid ; but if you put a few touches 
of blue among all these tones, you will immediately get striking effects if not 
skilfully conceived harmony. So the composition of blue glass singularly preoccu- 
pied the glassworkers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. If there is only 
one red, two yellows, two or three purples, and two or three greens at the most, 
there are infinite shades of blue, . . . and these blues are placed with a very deli- 
cate observation of the effects they should produce on other tones, and other tones 
on them. 



THE TWELFTH-CENTURY GLASS 131 

VIollet-le-Duc took the window of the Tree of Jesse as his first 
illustration of the rule, for the reason that its blue ground is one con- 
tinuous strip from top to bottom, with the subordinate red on either 
side, and a border uniting the whole so plainly that no one can fail to 
see its object or its method. 

The blue tone of the principal subject [that is to say, the ground of the Tree 
of Jesse] has commanded the tonality of all the rest. This medium was necessary 
to enable the luminous splendour to display its energy. This primary condition 
had dictated the red ground for the prophets, and the return to the blue on reach- 
ing the outside semicircular band. To give full value both to the vigour of the red, 
and to the radiating transparency of the blue, the ground of the corners is put in 
emerald green; but then, in the corners themselves, the blue is recalled and is 
given an additional solidity of value by the delicate ornamentation of the squares. 

This translation is very free, but one who wants to know these 
windows must read the whole article, and read it here in the church, 
the Dictionary in one hand, and binocle in the other, for the binocle is 
more important than the Dictionary when it reaches the complicated 
border which repeats in detail the colour-scheme of the centre: — 

The border repeats all the tones allotted to the principal subjects, but by small 
fragments, so that this border, with an effect both solid and powerful, shall not 
enter into rivalry with the large arrangements of the central parts. 

One would think this simple enough; easily tested on any illumi- 
nated manuscript, Arab, Persian, or Byzantine; verified by any Orien- 
tal rug, old or new; freely illustrated by any Chinese pattern on a Ming 
jar, or cloisonne vase; and offering a kind of alphabet for the shop- 
window of a Paris modiste. A strong red ; a strong and a weak yellow; 
a strong and a weak purple; a strong and a weak green, are all to be 
tied together, given their values, and held in their places by blue. The 
thing seems simpler still when it appears that perspective is forbidden, 
and that these glass windows of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, 
like Oriental rugs, imply a flat surface, a wall which must not be treated 
as open. The twelfth-century glassworker would sooner have worn a 
landscape on his back than have costumed his church with it; he would 



132 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

as soon have decorated his floors with painted holes as his walls. He 
wanted to keep the coloured window flat, like a rug hung on the wall. 

The radiation of translucent colours in windows cannot be modified by the art- 
ist; all his talent consists in profiting by it, according to a given harmonic scheme 
on a single plane, Tke a rug, but not according to an effect of aerial perspective. 
Do what you like, a ^lass window never does and never can represent anything 
but a plane surface ; its real virtues even exist only on that condition. Every at- 
tempt to present several planes to the eye is fatal to the harmony of colour, with- 
out producing any illusion in the spectator. . . . Translucid painting can pro- 
pose as its object only a design supporting as energetically as possible a harmony 
of colours. 

Whether this law is absolute you can tell best by looking at modern 
glass which is mostly perspective ; but, whether you like it or not, the 
matter of perspective does not enter into a twelfth-century window 
more than into a Japanese picture, and may be ignored. The decora- 
tion of the twelfth century, as far as concerns us, was intended only 
for one plane, and a window was another form of rug or embroidery 
or mosaic, hung on the wall for colour, — simple decoration to be seen 
as a whole. If the Tree of Jesse teaches anything at all, it is that the 
artist thought first of controlling his light, but he wanted to do it not 
in order to dim the colours; on the contrary, he toiled, like a jeweller 
setting diamonds and rubies, to increase their splendour. If his use 
of blue teaches this lesson, his use of green proves it. The outside bor- 
der of the Tree of Jesse is a sort of sample which our schoolmaster 
Viollet-le-Duc sets, from which he requires us to study out the scheme, 
beginning with the treatment of light, and ending with the value of the 
emerald green ground in the corners. 

Complicated as the border of the Tree of Jesse Is, it has its mates 
in the borders of the two other twelfth-century windows, and a few 
of the thirteenth-century In the side aisles; but the southern of the 
three lancets shows how the artists dealt with a difficulty that upset 
their rule. The border of the southern window does not count as it 
should ; something is wrong with it and a little study shows that the 



THE TWELFTH-CENTURY GLASS 133 

builder, and not the glassworker, was to blame. Owing to his mis- 
calculation — if it was really a miscalculation — in the width of the 
southern tower, the builder economized six or eight inches in the south- 
ern door and lancet, which was enough to destroy the balance between 
the colour-values, as masses, of the south and north windows. The 
artist was obliged to choose whether he would sacrifice the centre or 
the border of his southern window, and decided that the windows 
could not be made to balance if he narrowed the centre, but that he 
must balance them by enriching the centre, and sacrificing the border. 
He has filled the centre with medallions as rich as he could make them, 
and these he has surrounded with borders, which are also enriched to 
the utmost; but these medallions with their borders spread across the 
whole window, and when you search with the binocle for the outside 
border, you see its pattern clearly only at the top and bottom. On the 
sides, at intervals of about two feet, the medallions cover and inter- 
rupt it; l;)ut this is partly corrected by making the border, where it is 
seen, so rich as to surpass any other in the cathedral, even that of the 
Tree of Jesse. Whether the artist has succeeded or not is a question 
for other artists — or for you, if you please — to decide; but appar- 
ently he did succeed, since no one has ever noticed the difficulty or 
the device. 

The southern lancet represents the Passion of Christ. Granting to 
Viollet-le-Duc that the unbroken vertical colour-scheme of the Tree of 
Jesse made the more effective window, one might still ask whether 
the medallion-scheme is not the more interesting. Once past the work- 
shop, there can be no question about it; the Tree of Jesse has the least 
interest of all the three windows. A genealogical tree has little value, 
artistic or other, except to those who belong in its branches, and the 
Tree of Jesse was put there, not to please us, but to please the Virgin. 
The Passion window was also put there to please her, but it tells a 
stor^, and does it in a way that has more novelty than the subject. 
The draughtsman who chalked out the design on the whitened table 



134 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

that served for his sketch-board was either a Greek, or had before him 
a Byaantine missal, or enamel or ivory. The first medallion on these 
legendary windows is the lower left-hand one, which begins the story 
or legend; here it represents Christ after the manner of the Greek 
Church. In the next medallion is the Last Supper; the fish on the dish 
is Greek. In the middle of the window, with the help of the binocle, you 
will see a Crucifixion, or even two, for on the left is Christ on the Cross, 
and on the right a Descent from the Cross; in this is the figure of a 
man pulling out with pincers the nails which fasten Christ's feet; 
a figure unknown to Western religious art. The Noli Me Tangere, on 
the right, near the top, has a sort of Greek character. All the critics, 
especially M. Paul Durand, have noticed this Byzantine look, which 
is even more marked in the Suger window at Saint-Denis, so as to 
suggest that both are by the same hand, and that the hand of a Greek. 
If the artist was really a Greek, he has done work more beautiful than 
any left at Byzantium, and very far finer than anything in the beau- 
tiful work at Cairo, but although the figures and subjects are more or 
less Greek, like the sculptures on the portal, the art seems to be French. 
Look at the central window! Naturally, there sits the Virgin, with 
her genealogical tree on her left, and her Son's testimony on her right, 
to prove her double divinity. She is seated in the long halo ; as, on the 
western portal, directly beneath her, her Son is represented in stone. 
Her crown and head, as well as that of the Child, are fourteenth- 
century restorations more or less like the original ; but her cushioned 
throne and her robes of imperial state, as well as the flowered sceptre 
in either hand, are as old as the sculpture of the portal, and redolent of 
the first crusade. On either side of her, the Sun and the Moon offer 
praise; her two Archangels, Michael and Gabriel, with resplendent 
wings, offer not incense as in later times, but the two sceptres of spirit- 
ual and temporal power ; while the Child in her lap repeats His Mother's 
action and even her features and expression. At first sight, one would 
take for granted that all this was pure Byzantium, and perhaps it is; 



THE TWELFTH-CENTURY GLASS 135 

but it has rather the look of Byzantium gallicized, and carried up to a 
poetic French ideal. At Saint-Denis the Httle figure of the Abbe Suger 
at the feet of the Virgin has a very Oriental look, and in the twin me- 
dallion the Virgin resembles greatly the Virgin of Chartres, yet, for us, 
until some specialist shows us the Byzantine original, the work is as 
thoroughly French as the filches of the churches. 

Byzantine art is altogether another chapter, and, if we could but 
take a season to study it in Byzantium, we might get great amusement; 
but the art of Chartres, even in 1 100, was French and perfectly French, 
as the architecture shows, and the glass is even more French than the 
architecture, as you can detect in many other ways. Perhaps the surest 
evidence is the glass itself. The men who made it were not professional 
but amateurs, who may have had some knowledge of enamelling, but 
who worked like jewellers, unused to glass, and with the refinement that 
a reliquary or a crozier required. The cost of these windows must have 
been extravagan^; one is almost surprised that they are not set in gold 
rather than in lead. The Abbe Suger shirked neither trouble nor 
expense, and the only serious piece of evidence that this artist was a 
Greek is given by his biographer who unconsciously shows that the 
artist cheated him: "He sought carefully for makers of windows and 
workmen in glass of exquisite quality, especially in that made of sap- 
phires in great abundance that were pulverized and melted up in the 
glass to give it the blue colour which he delighted to admire." The 
"materia saphirorum" was evidently something precious, — as pre- 
cious as crude sapphires would have been, — and the words imply 
beyond question that the artist asked for sapphires and that Suger 
paid for them ; yet all specialists agree that the stone known as sap- 
phire, if ground, could not produce translucent colour at all. The blue 
which Suger loved, and which is probably the same as that of these 
Chartres windows, cannot be made out of sapphires. Probably the 
"materia saphirorum" means cobalt only, but whatever it was, the 
glassmakers seem to agree that this glass of 1140-50 is the best ever 



136 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

made. M. Paul Durand in his official report of 1881 said that these 
windows, both artistically and mechanically, were of the highest class: 
"I will also call attention to the fact that the glass and the execution 
of the painting are, materially speaking, of a quality much superior 
to windows of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Having 
passed several months in contact with these precious works when I 
copied them, I was able to convince myself of their superiority in 
every particular, especially in the upper parts of the three windows." 
He said that they were perfect and irreproachable. The true enthusi- 
ast in glass would in the depths of his heart like to say outright that 
these three windows are worth more than all that the French have 
since done in colour, from that day to this; but the matter concerns us 
chiefly because it shows how French the experiment was, and how 
Suger's taste and wealth made it possible. 

Certain it is, too, that the southern window — the Passion — was 
made on the spot, or near by, and fitted for the particular space with 
care proportionate to its cost. All are marked by the hand of the 
Chartres Virgin. They are executed not merely for her, but by her. 
At Saint-Denis the Abbe Suger appeared, — it is true that he was 
prostrate at her feet, but still he appeared. At Chartres no one — no 
suggestion of a human agency — was allowed to appear ; the Virgin 
permitted no one to approach her, even to adore. She is enthroned 
above, as Queen and Empress and Mother, with the symbols of exclu- 
sive and universal power. Below her, she permitted the world to see 
the glories of her earthly life; — the Annunciation, Visitation, and 
Nativity ; the Magi ; King Herod ; the Journey to Egypt ; and the single 
medallion, which shows the gods of Egypt falling from their pedestals 
at her coming, is more entertaining than a whole picture-gallery of oil 
paintings. 

In all France there exist barely a' dozen good specimens of twelfth- 
century glass. Besides these windows at Chartres and the fragments 
at Saint-Denis, there are windows at Le Mans and Angers and bits at 



THE TWELFTH-CENTURY GLASS 137 

Vendome, Chalons, Poitiers, Rheims, and Bourges ; here and there one 
happens on other pieces, but the earliest is the best, because the glass- 
makers were new at the work and spent on it an infinite amount of 
trouble and money which they found to be unnecessary as they gained 
experience. Even in 1200 the value of these windows was so well 
understood, relatively to new ones, that they were preserved with the 
greatest care. The effort to make such windows was never repeated. 
Their jewelled perfection did not suit the scale of the vast churches of 
the thirteenth century. By turning your head toward the windows of 
the side aisles, you can see the criticism which the later artists passed 
on the old work. They found it too refined, too brilliant, too jewel-like 
for the size of the new cathedral ; the play of light and colour allowed 
the eye too little repose; indeed, the eye could not see their whole 
beauty, and half their value was thrown away in this huge stone set- 
ting. At best they must have seemed astray on the bleak, cold, windy 
plain of Beauce, — homesick for Palestine or Cairo, — yearning for 
Monreale or Venice, — but this is not our affair, and, under the pro- 
tection of the Empress Virgin, Saint Bernard himself could have 
afforded to sin even to drunkenness of colour. With trifling expense of 
imagination one can still catch a glimpse of the crusades in the glory 
of the glass. The longer one looks into it, the more overpowering it 
becomes, until one begins almost to feel an echo of what our two 
hundred and fifty million arithmetical ancestors, drunk with the 
passion of youth and the splendour of the Virgin, have been calling to 
us from Mont-Saint- Michel and Chartres. No words and no wine 
could revive their emotions so vividly as they glow in the purity of the 
colours; the limpidity of the blues; the depth of the red; the intensity 
of the green ; the complicated harmonies ; the sparkle and splendour of 
the light; and the quiet and certain strength of the mass. 

With too strong direct sun the windows are said to suffer, and be- 
come a cluster of jewels — a delirium of coloured light. The lines, too, 
have different degrees of merit. These criticisms seldom strike a 



138 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

chance traveller, but he invariably makes the discovery that the de- 
signs within the medallions are childish. He may easily correct them, 
if he likes, and see what would happen to the window; but although 
this is the alphabet of art, and we are past spelling words of one sylla- 
ble, the criticism teaches at least one lesson. Primitive man seems to 
have had a natural colour-sense, instinctive like the scent of a dog. 
Society has no right to feel it as a moral reproach to be told that it has 
reached an age when it can no longer depend, as in childhood, on its 
taste, or smell, or sight, or hearing, or memory; the fact seems likely 
enough, and in no way sinful; yet society always denies it, and is 
invariably angry about it; and, therefore, one had better not say it. 
On the other hand, we can leave Delacroix and his school to fight out 
the battle they began against Ingres and his school, in French art, 
nearly a hundred years ago, which turned in substance on the same 
point. Ingres held that the first motive in colour-decoration was line, 
and that a picture which was well drawn was well enough coloured. 
Society seemed, on the whole, to agree with him. Society in the 
twelfth century agreed with Delacroix. The French held then that the. 
first point in colour-decoration was colour, and they never hesitated 
to put their colour where they wanted it, or cared whether a green 
camel or a pink lion looked like a dog or a donkey provided they got 
their harmony or value. Everything except colour was sacrificed to 
line in the large sense, but details of drawing were conventional and 
subordinate. So we laugh to see a knight with a blue face, on a green 
horse, that looks as though drawn by a four-year-old child, and prob- 
ably the artist laughed, too; but he was a colourist, and never sacri- 
ficed his colour for a laugh. 

We tourists assume commonly that he knew no better. In our sim- 
ple faith in ourselves, great hope abides, for it shows an earnestness 
hardly less than that of the crusaders ; but in the matter of colour one 
is perhaps less convinced, or more open to curiosity. No school of 
colour exists in our world to-day, while the Middle Ages had a dozen; 



THE TWELFTH-CENTURY GLASS 139 

but It IS certainly true that these twelfth-century windows break the 
French tradition. They had no antecedent, and no fit succession. All 
the authorities dwell on their exceptional character. One is sorely 
tempted to suspect that they were in some way an accident; that such 
an art could not have sprung, in such perfection, out of nothing, had it 
been really French ; that it must have had its home elsewhere — on the 
Rhine — in Italy — in Byzantium — or in Bagdad. 

The same controversy has raged for near two hundred years over the 
Gothic arch, and everything else mediaeval, down to the philosophy 
of the schools. The generation that lived during the first and second 
crusades tried a number of original experiments, besides capturing 
Jerusalem. Among other things, it produced the western portal of 
Chartres, with its statuary, its glass, and its fleche, as a by-play; as 
it produced Abelard, Saint Bernard, and Christian of Troyes, whose 
acquaintance we have still to make. It took ideas wherever it found 
them; — from Germany, Italy, Spain, Constantinople, Palestine, or 
from the source which has always attracted the French mind like a 
magnet — from ancient Greece. That it actually did take the ideas, 
no one disputes, except perhaps patriots who hold that even the ideas 
were original ; but to most students the ideas need to be accounted for 
less than the taste with which they were handled, and the quickness 
with which they were developed. That the taste was French, you can 
see in the architecture, or you will see if ever you meet the Gothic else- 
where; that it seized and developed an idea quickly, you have seen in 
the arch, the fleche, the porch, and the windows, as well as in the glass; 
but what we do not comprehend, and never shall, is the appetite 
behind all this; the greed for novelty: the fun of life. Every one who 
has lived since the sixteenth century has felt deep distrust of every one 
who lived before it, and of every one who believed in the Middle Ages. 
True it is that the last thirteenth-century artist died a long time before 
our planet began its present rate of revolution ; it had to come to rest, 
and begin again; but this does not prevent astonishment that the 



140 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

twelfth-century planet revolved so fast. The pointed arch not only 
came as an idea into France, but it was developed into a system of 
architecture and covered the country with buildings on a scale of 
height never before attempted except by the dome, with an expendi- 
ture of wealth that would make a railway system look cheap, all in a 
space of about fifty years; the glass came with it, and went with it, at 
least as far as concerns us; but, if you need other evidence, you can 
consult Renan, who is the highest authority: "One of the most singu- 
lar phenomena of the literary history of the Middle Ages," says Renan 
of Averroes, "is the activity of the intellectual commerce, and the 
rapidity with which books were spread from one end of Europe to the 
other. The philosophy of Abelard during his lifetime (1100-42) had 
penetrated to the ends of Italy. The French poetry of the trouveres 
counted within less than a century translations into German, Swedish, 
Norwegian, Icelandic, Flemish, Dutch, Bohemian, Italian, Spanish"; 
and he might have added that England needed no translation, but 
helped to compose the poetry, not being at that time so insular as she 
afterwards became. "Such or such a work, composed in Morocco or in 
Cairo, was known at Paris and at Cologne in less time than it would 
need in our days for a German book of capital importance to pass the 
Rhine"; and Renan wrote this in 1852 when German books of capital 
importance were revolutionizing the literary world. 

One is apt to forget the smallness of Europe, and how quickly it 
could always be crossed. In summer weather, with fair winds, one can 
sail from Alexandria or from Syria, to Sicily, or even to Spain and 
France, in perfect safety and with ample room for freight, as easily 
how as one could do it then, without the aid of steam ; but one does not 
now carry freight of philosophy, poetry, or art. The world still strug- 
gles for unity, but by different methods, weapons, and thought. The 
mercantile exchanges which surprised Renan, and which have puzzled 
historians, were in ideas. The twelfth century was as greedy for them 
in one shape as the nineteenth century in another. France paid for 



THE TWELFTH-CENTURY GLASS 141 

them dearly, and repented for centuries; but what creates surprise to 
the point of incredulity is her hunger for them, the youthful gluttony 
with which she devoured them, the infallible taste with which she 
dressed them out. The restless appetite that snatched at the pointed 
arch, the stone fleche, the coloured glass, the illuminated missal, the 
chanson and roman and pastorelle, the fragments of Aristotle, the 
glosses of Avicenne, was nothing compared with the genius which 
instantly gave form and flower to them all. 

This episode merely means that the French twelfth-century artist 
may be supposed to have known his business, and if he produced a 
grotesque, or a green-faced Saint, or a blue castle, or a syllogism, or a 
song, that he did it with a notion of the effect he had in mind. The 
glass window was to him a whole, — a mass, — and its details were his 
amusement; for the twelfth-century Frenchman enjoyed his fun, 
though it was sometimes rather heavy for modern French taste, and 
less refined than the Church liked. These three twelfth-century win- 
dows, like their contemporary portal outside, and the fleche that goes 
with them, are the ideals of enthusiasts of mediaeval art; they are 
above the level of all known art, in religious form ; they are inspired ; 
they are divine ! This is the claim of Chartres and its Virgin. Actually, 
the French artist, whether architect, sculptor, or painter in glass, 
did rise here above his usual level. He knew it when he did it, and 
probably he attributed it, as we do, to the Virgin; for these works 
of his were hardly fifty years old when the rest of the old church was 
burned ; and already the artist felt the virtue gone out of him. He could 
not do so well in 1200 as he did in 1 150; and the Virgin was not so 
near. 

The proof of it — or, if you prefer to think so, the proof against it — 
is before our eyes on the wall above the lancet windows. When Villard 
de Honnecourt came to Chartres, he seized at once on the western rose 
as his study, although the two other roses were probably there, in all 
their beauty and lightness. He saw in the western rose some quality of 



142 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

construction which interested him; and, in fact, the western rose is one 
of the flowers of architecture which reveals its beauties slowly without 
end; but its chief beauty is the feeling which unites it with the portal, 
the lancets, and the fleche. The glassworker here in the interior had 
the same task to perform. The glass of the lancets was fifty years old 
when the glass for the rose was planned; perhaps it was seventy, for 
the exact dates are unknown, but it does not matter, for the greater the 
interval, the more interesting is the treatment. Whatever the date, 
the glass of the western rose cannot be much earlier or much later than 
that of the other roses, or that of the choir, and yet you see at a glance 
that it is quite differently treated. On such matters one must, of 
course, submit to the opinion of artists, which one does the more read- 
ily because they always disagree ; but until the artists tell us better, we 
may please ourselves by fancying that the glass of the rose was 
intended to harmonize with that of the lancets, and unite it with the 
thirteenth-century glass of the nave and transepts. Among all the 
thirteenth-century windows the western rose alone seems to affect a 
rivalry in brilliancy with the lancets, and carries it so far that the sepa- 
rate medallions and pictures are quite lost, — especially in direct 
sunshine, — blending in a confused effect of opals, in a delirium of 
colour and light, with a result like a cluster of stones in jewelry. 
Assuming as one must, in want of the artist's instruction, that he 
knew what he wanted to do, and did it, one must take for granted that 
he treated the rose as a whole, and aimed at giving it harmony with the 
three precious windows beneath. The effect is that of a single large 
ornament; a round breastpin, or what is now called a sunburst, of 
jewels, with three large pendants beneath. 

We are ignorant tourists, liable to much error in trying to seek 
motives in artists who worked seven hundred years ago for a society 
which thought and felt in forms quite unlike ours, but the mediaeval 
pilgrim was more ignorant than we, and much simpler in mind ; if the 
idea of an ornament occurs to us, it certainly occurred to him., and still 



THE TWELFTH-CENTURY GLASS 143 

more to the glassworker whose business was to excite his illusions. An 
artist, if good for anything, foresees what his public will see ; and what 
his public will see is what he ought to have intended — the measure of 
his genius. If the public sees more than he himself did, this is his 
credit; if less, this is his fault. No matter how simple or ignorant we 
are, we ought to feel a discord or a harmony where the artist meant us 
to feel it, and when we see a motive, we conclude that other people 
have seen it before us, and that it must, therefore, have been intended. 
Neither of the transept roses is treated like this one; neither has the 
effect of a personal ornament; neither is treated as a jewel. No one 
knew so well as the artist that such treatment must give the effect of a 
jewel. The Roses of France and of Dreux bear indelibly and flagrantly 
the character of France and Dreux; on the western rose is stamped 
with greater refinement but equal decision the character of a much 
greater power than either of them. 

No artist would have ventured to put up, before the eyes of Mary 
in Majesty, above the windows so dear to her, any object that she had 
not herself commanded. Whether a miracle was necessary, or whether 
genius was enough, is a point of casuistry which you can settle with 
Albertus Magnus or Saint Bernard, and which you will understand as 
little when settled as before; but for us, beyond the futilities of unnec- 
essary doubt, the Virgin designed this rose; not perhaps in quite the 
same perfect spirit in which she designed the lancets, but still wholly 
for her own pleasure and as her own idea. She placed upon the breast 
of her Church — which symbolized herself — a jewel so gorgeous that 
no earthly majesty could bear comparison with it, and which no other 
heavenly majesty has rivalled. As one watches the light play on it, one 
is still overcome by the glories of the jewelled rose and its three 
gemmed pendants; one feels a little of the effect she meant it to 
produce even on infidels. Moors, and heretics, but infinitely more on 
the men who feared and the women who adored her; — not to dwell 
too long upon it, one admits that hers is the only Church. One 



144 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

would admit anything that she should require. If you had only the 
soul of a shrimp, you would crawl, like the Abbe Suger, to kiss her 
feet. 

Unfortunately she is gone, or comes here now so very rarely that we 
never shall see her ; but her genius remains as individual here as the 
genius of Blanche of Castile and Pierre de Dreux in the transepts. 
That the three lancets were her own taste, as distinctly as the Trianon 
was the taste of Louis XIV, is self-evident. They represent all that 
was dearest to her; her Son's glory on her right; her own beautiful 
life in the middle; her royal ancestry on her left: the story of her 
divine right, thrice-told. The pictures are all personal, like family por- 
traits. Above them the man who worked in 1200 to carry out the 
harmony, and to satisfy the Virgin's wishes, has filled his rose with a 
dozen or two little compositions in glass, which reveal their subjects 
only to the best powers of a binocle. Looking carefully, one discovers 
at last that this gorgeous combination of all the hues of Paradise con- 
tains or hides a Last Judgment — the one subject carefully excluded 
from the old work, and probably not existing on the south portal for 
another twenty years. If the scheme of the western rose dates from 
1200, as is reasonable to suppose, this Last Judgment is the oldest in 
the church, and makes a link between the theology of the first crusade, 
beneath, and the theology of Pierre Mauclerc in the south porch. The 
churchman is the'only true and final judge on his own doctrine, and we 
neither know nor care to know the facts; but we are as good judges as 
he of the feeling, and we are at full liberty to feel that such a Last 
Judgment as this was never seen before or since by churchman or here- 
tic, unless by virtue of the heresy which held that the true Christian 
must be happy in being damned since such is the will of God. That 
this blaze of heavenly light was intended, either by the Virgin or by 
her workmen, to convey ideas of terror or pain, is a notion which the 
Church might possibly preach, but which we sinners knew to be false 
in the thirteenth century as well as we know it now. Never in all these 



THE TWELFTH-CENTURY GLASS 145 

seven hundred years has one of us looked up at this rose without feel- 
ing it to be Our Lady's promise of Paradise. 

Here as everywhere else throughout the church, one feels the Vir- 
gin's presence, with no other thought than her majesty and grace. To 
the Virgin and to her suppliants, as to us, who though outcasts in other 
churches can still hope in hers, the Last Judgment was not a symbol 
of God's justice or man's corruption, but of her own infinite mercy. 
The Trinity judged, through Christ; — Christ loved and pardoned, 
through her. She wielded the last and highest power on earth and in 
hell. In the glow and beauty of her nature, the light of her Son's 
infinite love shone as the sunlight through the glass, turning the Last 
Judgment itself into the highest proof of her divine and supreme 
authority. The rudest ruffian of the Middle Ages, when he looked at 
this Last Judgment, laughed; for what was the Last Judgment to her! 
An ornament, a plaything, a pleasure! a jewelled decoration which she 
wore on her breast! Her chief joy was to pardon; her eternal instinct 
was to love; her deepest passion was pity! On her imperial heart the 
flames of hell showed only the opaline colours of heaven. Christ the 
Trinity might judge as much as He pleased, but Christ the Mother 
would rescue; and her servants could look boldly into the flames. 

If you, or even our friends the priests who still serve Mary's 
shrine, suspect that there is some exaggeration in this language, it will 
only oblige you to admit presently that there is none ; but for the mo- 
ment we are busy with glass rather than with faith, and there is a world 
of glass here still to study. Technically, we are done with it. The 
technique of the thirteenth century comes naturally and only too 
easily out of that of the twelfth. Artistically, the motive remains the 
same, since it is always the Virgin ; but although the Virgin of Chartres 
is always the Virgin of Majesty, there are degrees in the assertion of 
her majesty even here, which affect the art, and qualify its feeling. 
Before stepping down to the thirteenth century, one should look at 
these changes of the Virgin's royal presence. 



146 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

First and most important as record is the stone Virgin on the south 
door of the western portal, which we studied, with her Byzantine 
Court; and the second, also in stone, is of the same period, on one of the 
carved capitals of the portal, representing the Adoration of the Magi. 
The third is the glass Virgin at the top of the central lancet. All three 
are undoubted twelfth-century work ; and you can see another at Paris, 
on the same door of Notre Dame, and still more on Abbe Suger's 
window at Saint-Denis, and, later, within a beautiful grisaille at 
Auxerre; but all represent the same figure; a Queen, enthroned, 
crowned, with the symbols of royal power, holding in her lap the infant 
King whose guardian she is. Without pretending to know what special 
crown she bears, we can assume, till corrected, that it is the Carlovin- 
gian imperial, not the Byzantine. The Trinity nowhere appears except 
as implied in the Christ. At the utmost, a mystic hand may symbolize 
the Father. The Virgin as represented by the artists of the twelfth 
century in the lie de France and at Chartres seems to be wholly 
French in spite of the Greek atmosphere of her workmanship. One 
might almost insist that she is blonde, full in face, large in figure, 
dazzlingly beautiful, and not more than thirty years of age. The Child 
never seems to be more than five. 

You are equally free to see a Southern or Eastern type in her face, 
and perhaps the glass suggests a dark type, but the face of the Virgin 
on the central lancet is a fourteenth-century restoration which may or 
may not reproduce the original, while all the other Virgins represented 
in glass, except one, belong to the thirteenth century. The possible 
exception is a well-known figure called Notre-Dame-de-la-Belle- 
Verriere in the choir next the south transept. A strange, almost un- 
canny feeling seems to haunt this window, heightened by the venera- 
tion in which it was long held as a shrine, though it is now deserted for 
Notre-Dame-du-Pilier on the opposite side of the choir. The charm is 
partly due to the beauty of the scheme of the angels, supporting, 
saluting, and incensing the Virgin and Child with singular grace and 



THE TWELFTH-CENTURY GLASS 147 

exquisite feeling, but rather that of the thirteenth than of the twelfth 
century. Here, too, the face of the Virgin is not ancient. Apparently 
the original glass was injured by time or accident, and the colours 
were covered or renewed by a simple drawing in oil. Elsewhere the 
colour is thought to be particularly good, and the window is a favourite 
mine of motives for artists to exploit, but to us its chief interest is its 
singular depth of feeling. The Empress Mother sits full-face, on a rich 
throne and dais, with the Child on her lap, repeating her attitude ex- 
cept that her hands support His shoulders. She wears her crown ; her 
feet rest on a stool, and both stool, rug, robe, and throne are as rich as 
colour and decoration can make them. At last a dove appears, with 
the rays of the Holy Ghost. Imperial as the Virgin is, it is no longer 
quite the unlimited empire of the western lancet. The aureole encircles 
her head only ; she holds no sceptre ; the Holy Ghost seems to give her 
support which she did not need before, while Saint Gabriel and Saint 
Michael, her archangels, with their symbols of power, have disap- 
peared. Exquisite as the angels are who surround and bear up her 
throne, they assert no authority. The window itself is not a single 
composition ; the panels below seem inserted later merely to fill up the 
space; six represent the Marriage of Cana, and the three at the bottom 
show a grotesque little demon tempting Christ in the Desert. The 
effect of the whole, in this angle which is almost always dark or filled 
with shadow, is deep and sad, as though the Empress felt her authority 
fail, and had come down from the western portal to reproach us for 
neglect. The face is haunting. Perhaps its force may be due to near- 
ness, for this is the only instance in glass of her descending so low that 
we can almost touch her, and see what the twelfth century instinc- 
tively felt in the features which, even in their beatitude, were serious 
and almost sad under the austere responsibilities of infinite pity and 
power. 

No doubt the window Is very old, or perhaps an imitation or repro- 
duction of one which was much older, but to the pilgrim its interest lies 



148 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

mostly in its personality, and there it stands alone. Although the Vir- 
gin reappears again and again in the lower windows, — as in those on 
either side of the Belle- Verriere ; in the remnant of window represent- 
ing her miracles at Chartres, in the south aisle next the transept ; in the 
fifteenth-century window of the chapel of Vendome which follows; and 
in the third window which follows that of Vendome and represents her 
coronation, — she does not show herself again in all her majesty till we 
look up to the high windows above. There we shall find her in her 
splendour on her throne, above the high altar, and still more con- 
spicuously in the Rose of France in the north transept. Still again she 
is enthroned in the first window of the choir next the north transept. 
Elsewhere we can see her standing, but never does she come down to 
us in the full splendour of her presence. Yet wherever we find her at 
Chartres, and of whatever period, she is always Queen. Her expression 
and attitude are always calm and commanding. She never calls for 
sympathy by hysterical appeals to our feelings ; she does not even alto- 
gether command, but rather accepts the voluntary, unquestioning, 
unhesitating, instinctive faith, love, and devotion of mankind. She 
will accept ours, and we have not the heart to refuse it; we have not 
even the right, for -we are her guests. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE LEGENDARY WINDOWS 

ONE'S first visit to a great cathedral is like one's first visit to the 
British Museum; the only intelligent idea is to follow the order 
of time, but the museum is a chaos in time, and the cathedral is generally 
all of one and the same time. At Chartres, after finishing with the 
twelfth century, everything is of the thirteenth. To catch even an order 
in time, one must first know what part of the thirteenth-century 
church was oldest. The books say it was the choir. After the fire of 
1 194, the pilgrims used the great crypt as a church where services were 
maintained ; but the builders must have begun with the central piers 
and the choir, because the choir was the only essential part of the 
church. Nave and transepts might be suppressed, but without a choir 
the church was useless, and in a shrine, such as Chartres, the choir was 
the whole church. Toward the choir, then, the priest or artist looks 
first; and, since dates are useful, the choir must be dated. The same 
popular enthusiasm, which had broken out in 1145, revived in 1195 to 
help the rebuilding ; and the work was pressed forward with the same 
feverish haste, so that ten years should have been ample to provide for 
the choir, if for nothing more; and services may have been resumed 
there as early as the year 1206; certainly in 1210. Probably the win- 
dows were designed and put in hand as soon as the architect gave the 
measurements, and any one who intended to give a window would 
have been apt to choose one of the spaces in the apse, in Mary's own 
presence, next the sanctuary. 

The first of the choir windows to demand a date is the Belle- Verriere, 
which is commonly classed as early thirteenth-century, and may go 
with the two windows next it, one of which — the so-called Zodiac 
window — bears a singularly interesting inscription : " Comes Teobal- 



150 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

Dus DAT ... AD PRECES CoMiTis Pticensis." If Shakespeare could 
write the tragedy of "King John," we cannot admit ourselves not to 
have read it, and this inscription might be a part of the play. The 
"pagus perticensis" lies a short drive to the west, some fifteen or 
twenty miles on the road to Le Mans, and in history is known as the 
Comte du Perche, although its memory is now preserved chiefly by its 
famous breed of Percheron horses. Probably the horse also dates from 
the crusades, and may have carried Richard Coeur-de-Lion, but in any 
case the count of that day was a vassal of Richard, and one of his inti- 
mate friends, whose memory is preserved forever by a single line in 
Richard's prison-song: — 

Mes compaignons cui j'amoie et cui j'aim, 
Ces dou Caheu et ces dou Percherain. 

In 1 194, when Richard Coeur-de-Lion wrote these verses, the Comte 
du Perche was Geoff roy III, who had been a companion of Richard on 
his crusade in 1192, where, according to the Chronicle, "he s]iewed 
himself but a timid man " ; which seems scarcely likely in a companion 
of Richard; but it is not of him that the Chartres window speaks, 
except as the son of Mahaut or Matilda of Champagne who was a sis- 
ter of Alix of Champagne, Queen of France. The Table shows, there- 
fore, that Geoffroi's son and successor as the Comte du Perche — 
Thomas — was second cousin of Louis the Lion, known as King Louis 
VIII of France. They were probably of much the same age. 

If this were all, one might carry it in one's head for a while, but the 
relationship which dominates the history of this period was that of all 
these great ruling families with Richard Coeur-de-Lion and his brother 
John, nicknamed Lackland, both of whom in succession were the most 
powerful Frenchmen in France. The Table shows that their mother 
Eleanor of Guienne, the first Queen of Louis VII, bore him two 
daughters, one of whom, Alix, married, about 1 164, the Count Thibaut 
of Chartres and Blois, while the other, Mary, married the great Count 
of Champagne. Both of them being half-sisters of Coeur-de-Lion and 



THE LEGENDARY WINDOWS 151 

John, their children were nephews or half-nephews, indiscriminately, 
of all the reigning monarchs, and Coeur-de-Lion immortalized one of 
them by a line in his prison-song, as he immortalized Le Perche: — 

Je nel di pas de celi de Chartain, 
La mere Loeis. 

"Loeis," therefore, or Count Louis of Chatres, was not only nephew 
of Coeur-de-Lion and John Lackland, but was also, like Count Thomas 
of Le Perche, a second cousin of Louis VI I L Feudally and personally 
he was directly attached to Coeur-de-Lion rather than to Philip 
Augustus. 

If society in the twelfth century could follow the effects of these 
relationships, personal and feudal, it was cleverer than society in the 
twentieth ; but so much is simple : Louis of France, Thibaut of Char- 
tres, and Thomas of Le Perche, were cousins and close friends in the 
year 12 15, and all were devoted to the Virgin of Chartres. Judging 
from the character of Louis's future queen, Blanche of Castile, their 
wives were, if possible, more devoted still; and in that year Blanche 
gave birth to Saint Louis, who seems to have been the most devoted 
of all. 

Meanwhile their favourite uncle, Coeur-de-Lion, had died in the 
year 1199. Thibaut's great-grandmother, Eleanor of Guienne, died in 
1202. King John, left to himself, rapidly accumulated enemies innu- 
merable, abroad and at home. In 1203, Philip Augustus confiscated all 
the fiefs he held from the French Crown, and in 1204 seized Normandy. 
John sank rapidly from worse to worst, until at last the English barons 
rose and forced him to grant their Magna Carta at Runnimede in 
1215. 

The year 12 15 was, therefore, a year to be remembered at Chartres, 
as at Mont-Saint-Michel; one of the most convenient dates in history. 
Every one is supposed, even now, to know what happened then, to 
give another violent wrench to society, like the Norman Conquest in 
1066. John turned on the barons and broke them down; they sent to 



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THE LEGENDARY WINDOWS 153 

France for help, and offered the crown of England to young Louis, 
whose father, Philip Augustus, called a council which pledged support 
to Louis. Naturally the Comte du Perche and the Comte de Chartres 
must have pledged their support, among the foremost, to go with Louis 
to England. He was then twenty-nine years old; they were probably 
somewhat younger. 

The Zodiac window, with its inscription, was the immediate result. 
The usual authority that figures in the histories is Roger of Wendover, 
but much the more amusing for our purpose is a garrulous Frenchman 
known as the M6nestrel de Rheims who wrote some fifty years later. 
After telling in his delightful thirteenth-century French, how the Eng- 
lish barons sent hostages to Louis, "et mes sires Loueys les fit bien 
gardeir et honourablement," the Menestrel continued: — 

Et assembla granz genz par amours, et par deniers, et par lignage. Et fu avec 
lui li cuens dou Perche, et li cuens de Montfort, et li cuens de Chartres, et li cuens 
de Monbleart, et mes sires Enjorrans de Couci, et mout d'autre grant seigneur 
dont je ne parole mie. 

The Comte de Chartres, therefore, may be supposed to have gone 
with the Comte du Perche, and to have witnessed the disaster at 
Lincoln which took place May 20, 1217, after King John's death: — 

Et li cuens dou Perche faisait I'avantgarde, et courut tout leiz des portes; et la 
garnisons de laienz issi hors et leur coururent sus ; et i ot asseiz trait et lancie ; et 
chevaus morz et chevaliers abatuz, et gent k pi6 morz et navreiz. Et li cuens dou 
Perche i fu morz par un ribaut qui li leva le pan dou hauberc, et I'ocist d'un coutel ; 
et f u desconfite 1 'avantgarde par la mort le conte. Et quant mes sires Loueys le 
sot, si ot graigneur duel qu'il eust onques, car il estoit ses prochains ami de char. 

Such language would be spoiled by translation. For us it is enough 
to know that the "ribaut" who lifted the "pan," or skirt, of the 
Count's "hauberc" or coat-of-mail, as he sat on his horse refusing to 
surrender to English traitors, and stabbed him from below with a knife, 
may have been an invention of the Menestrel; or the knight who 
pierced with his lance through the visor to the brain, may have been 
an invention of Roger of Wendover; but in either case, Count Thomas 



154 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

du Perche lost his life at Lincoln, May 20, 12 17, to the deepest 
regret of his cousin Louis the Lion as well as of the Count Thibaut of 
Chartres, whom he charged to put up a window for him in honour 
of the Virgin. 

The window must have been ordered at once, because Count Thi- 
baut, "le Jeune ou le Lepreux," died himself within a year, April 22^ 
12 1 8, thus giving an exact date for one of the choir windows. Probably 
it was one of the latest, because the earliest to be provided would have 
been certainly those of the central apsidal chapel. According to the 
rule laid down by Viollet-le-Duc, the windows in which blue strongly 
predominates, like the Saint Sylvester, are likely to be earlier than 
those with a prevailing tone of red. We must take for granted that 
some of these great legendary windows were in place as early as 12 10, 
because, in October of that year, Philip Augustus attended mass here. 
There are some two dozen of these windows in the choir alone, each of 
which may well have represented a year's work in the slow processes of 
that day, and we can hardly suppose that the workshops of 1200 were 
on a scale such as to allow of more than two to have been in hand at 
once. Thirty or forty years later, when the Sainte Chapelle was built, 
the workshops must have been vastly enlarged, but with the enlarge- 
ment, the glass deteriorated. Therefore, if the architecture were so far 
advanced in the year 1200 as to allow of beginning work on the glass, 
in the apse, the year 1225 is none too late to allow for its completion in 
the choir. 

Dates are stupidly annoying; — what we want is not dates but 
taste; — yet we are uncomfortable without them. Except the Perche 
window, none of the lower ones in the choir helps at all ; but the clere- 
story is more useful. There they run in pairs, each pair surmounted 
by a rose. The first pair (numbers 2^] and 28) next the north transept, 
shows the Virgin of France, supported, according to the Abbes Bulteau 
and Clerval, by the arms of Bishop Reynault de Mougon, who was 
Bishop of Chartres at the time of the great fire in 1194 and died in 



THE LEGENDARY WINDOWS 155 

12 1 7. The window number 28 shows two groups of peasants on pil- 
grimage; below, on his knees, Robert of Berou, as donor: "Robertus 
DE Berou: Carn. Cancellarius." The Cartulary of the Cathedral 
contains an entry (Bulteau, i, 123): "The 26^^ February, 1216, died 
Robert de Berou, Chancellor, who has given us a window." The 
Cartulary mentions several previous gifts of windows by canons or 
other dignitaries of the Church in the year 12 15. 

Next follow, or once followed, a pair of windows (numbers 29 and 30) 
which were removed by the sculptor Bridan, in 1788, in order to obtain 
light for his statuary below. The donor was "Domina Johannes 
Baftista," who, we are told, was Jeanne de Dammartin; and the win- 
dow was given in memory, or in honour, of her marriage to Ferdinand 
of Castile in 1237. Jeanne was a very great lady, daughter of the 
Comte d'Aumale and Marie de Ponthieu. Her father affianced her in 
1235 to the King of England, Henry HI, and even caused the marriage 
to be celebrated by proxy, but Queen Blanche broke it off, as she had 
forbidden, in 1 231, that of Yolande of Britanny. She relented so far as 
to allow Jeanne in 1237 to marry Ferdinand of Castile, who still sits on 
horseback in the next rose: "Rex Castill^e." He won the crown of 
Castile in 12 17 and died in 1252, when Queen Jeanne returned to 
Abbeville and then, at latest, put up this window at Chartres in mem- 
ory of her husband. 

The windows numbers 31 and 32 are the subject of much dispute, 
but whether the donors were Jean de Chatillon or the three children of 
Thibaut le Grand of Champagne, they must equally belong to the later 
series of 1260-70, rather than to the earlier of 1210-20. The same 
thing is or was true of the next pair, numbers 33 and 34, which were 
removed in 1773, but the record says that at the bottom of number 34 
was the figure of Saint Louis's son, Louis of France, who died in 1260, 
before his father, who still rides in the rose above. 

Thus the north side of the choir shows a series of windows that 
precisely cover the lifetime of Saint Louis (1215-70). The south side 



156 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

begins, next the apse, with windows numbers 35 and 36, which belong, 
according to the Comte d'Armancourt, to the family of Montfort, 
whose ruined castle crowns the hill of Montfort I'Amaury, on the road 
to Paris, some forty kilometres northeast of Chartres. Every one is 
supposed to know the story of Simon de Montfort who was killed 
before Toulouse in 12 18. Simon left two sons, Amaury and Simon. 
The sculptor Bridan put an end also to the window of Amaury, but in 
the rose, Amaury, according to the Abbes, still rides on a white horse. 
Amaury' s history is well known. He was made Constable of France 
by Queen Blanche in 1231 ; went on crusade in 1239; was captured by 
the infidels, taken to Babylon, ransomed, and in returning to France, 
died at Otranto in 1241. For that age Amaury was but a commonplace 
person, totally overshadowed by his brother Simon, who went to 
England, married King John's daughter Eleanor,' and became almost 
king himself as Earl of Leicester. At your leisure you can read Mat- 
thew Paris's dramatic account of him and of his death at the battle of 
Evesham, August 5, 1265. He was perhaps the last of the very great 
men of the thirteenth century, excepting Saint Louis himself, who 
lived a few years longer. M. d'Armancourt insists that it is the great 
Earl of Leicester who rides with his visor up, in full armour, on a 
brown horse, in the rose above the windows numbers 37 and 38. In 
any case, the windows would be later than 1240. 

The next pair of windows, numbers 39 and 40, also removed in 1788, 
still offer, in their rose, the figure of a member of the Courtenay family. 
Gibbon was so much attracted by the romance of the Courtenays as to 
make an amusing digression on the subject which does not concern us 
or the cathedral except so far as it tells us that the Courtenays, like so 
many other benefactors of Chartres Cathedral, belonged to the royal 
blood. Louis-Ie-Gros, who died in 1 137, besides his son Louis-le-Jeune, 
who married Eleanor of Guienne in that year, had a younger son, 
Pierre, whom he married to Isabel de Courtenay, and who, like Philip 
Hurepel, took the title of his wife. Pierre had a son, Pierre II, who 



THE LEGENDARY WINDOWS 157 

was a cousin of Philip Augustus, and became the hero of the most lurid 
tragedy of the time. Chosen Emperor of Constantinople in 1216, to 
succeed his brothers-in-law Henry and Baldwin, he tried to march 
across Illyria and Macedonia, from Durazzo opposite Brindisi, with a 
little army of five thousand men, and instantly disappeared forever. 
The Epirotes captured him in the summer of 12 17, and from that 
moment nothing is known of his fate. 

On the whole, this catastrophe was perhaps the grimmest of all the 
Shakespearean tragedies of the thirteenth century ; and one would like 
to think that the Chartres window was a memorial of this Pierre, who 
was a cousin of France and an emperor without empire; but M. d'Ar- 
mancourt insists that the window was given in memory not of this 
Pierre, but of his nephew, another Pierre de Courtenay, Seigneur de 
Conches, who went on crusade with Saint Louis in 1249 to Egypt, and 
died shortly before the defeat and captivity of the King, on February 
8, 1250. His brother Raoul, Seigneur d'llliers, who died in 1271, is said 
to be donor of the next window, number 40. The date of the Courte- 
nay windows should therefore be no earlier than the death of Saint 
Louis in 1270; yet one would like to know what has become of another 
Courtenay window left by the first Pierre's son-in-law, Gaucher or 
Gaultier of Bar-sur-Seine, who seems to have been Vicomte de Char- 
tres, and who, dying before Damietta in 12 18, made a will leaving 
to Notre Dame de Chartres thirty silver marks, "de quibus fieri debet 
miles montatus super equum suum." Not only would this mounted 
knight on horseback supply an early date for these interesting fig- 
ures, but would fix also the cost, for a mark contained eight ounces of 
silver, and was worth ten sous, or half a livre. We shall presently 
see that Aucassins gave twenty sous, or a livre, for a strong ox, so 
that the "miles montatus super equum suum" in glass was equi- 
valent to fifteen oxen if it were money of Paris, which is far from 
certain. 

This is an economical problem which belongs to experts, but the 



158 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

historical value of these early evidences is still something, — perhaps 
still as much as ten sous. All the windows tend to the same conclusion. 
Even the last pair, numbers 41 and 42, offer three personal clues which 
lead to the same result : — the arms of Bouchard de Marly who died in 
1226, almost at the same time as Louis VIII; a certain Colinus or 
Colin, "de camera Regis," who was alive in 1225; and Robert of 
Beaumont in the rose, who seems to be a Beaumont of Le Perche, of 
whom little or nothing is as yet certainly known. As a general rule, 
there are two series of windows, one figuring the companions or fol- 
lowers of Louis VIII (1215-26); the other, friends or companions of 
Saint Louis (1226-70), Queen Blanche uniting both. What helps to 
hold the sequences in a certain order, is that the choir was complete, 
and services regularly resumed there, in 12 10, while in 1220 the tran- 
sept and nave were finished and vaulted. For the apside windows, 
therefore, we will assume, subject to correction, a date from 1200 to 
1225 for their design and workmanship; for the transept, 1220 to 1236; 
and for the nave a general tendency to the actual reign of Saint Louis 
from 1236 to 1270. Since there is a deal of later glass scattered every- 
where among the earlier, the margin of error is great; but by keeping 
the reign of Louis VIII and its personages distinct from that of Louis 
IX and his generation, we can be fairly sure of our main facts. Mean- 
while the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, wholly built and completed be- 
tween 1240 and 1248, offers a standard of comparison for the legendary 
windows. 

The choir of Chartres is as long as the nave, and much broader, 
besides that the apse was planned with seven circular projections 
which greatly increased the window space, so that the guidebook 
reckons thirty-seven windows. A number of these are grisailles, and 
the true amateur of glass considers the grisailles to be as well worth 
study as the legendary windows. They are a decoration which has no 
particular concern with churches, and no distinct religious meaning, 
but, it seems, a religious value which Viollet-le-Duc is at some trouble 



THE LEGENDARY WINDOWS 159 

to explain; and, since his explanation is not very technical, we can look 
at it, before looking at the legends: — 

The colouration of the windows had the advantage ot throwing on the opaque 
walls a veil, or coloured glazing, of extreme delicacy, always assuming that the 
coloured windows themselves were harmoniously toned. Whether their resources 
did not permit the artists to adopt a complete system of coloured glass, or whether 
they wanted to get daylight in purer quality into their interiors, — whatever may 
have been their reasons, — they resorted to this beautiful grisaille decoration 
which is also a colouring harmony obtained by the aid of a long experience in the 
effects of light on translucent surfaces. Many of our churches retain grisaille win- 
dows filling either all, or only a part, of their bays. In the latter case, the grisailles 
are reserved for the side windows which are meant to be seen obliquely, and in that 
case the coloured glass fills the bays of the fond, the apsidal openings which are 
meant to be seen in face from a distance. These lateral grisailles are still opaque 
enough to prevent the solar rays which pass through them from lighting the 
coloured windows on the reverse side; yet, at certain hours of the day, these solar 
rays throw a pearly light on the coloured windows which gives them indescribable 
transparence and refinement of tones. The lateral windows in the choir of the 
Auxerre Cathedral, half-grisaille, half -coloured, throw on the wholly coloured 
apsidal window, by this means, a glazing the softness of which one can hardly con- 
ceive. The opaline light which comes through these lateral bays, and makes a sort 
of veil, transparent in the extreme, under the lofty vaulting, is crossed by the 
brilliant tones of the windows behind, which give the play of precious stones. The 
solid outlines then seem to waver like objects seen through a sheet of clear water. 
Distances change their values, and take depths in which the eye gets lost. With 
every hour of the day these effects are altered, and always with new harmonies 
which one never tires of trying to understand ; but the deeper one's study goes, the 
more astounded one becomes before the experience acquired by these artists, whose 
theories on the effects of colour, assuming that they had any, are unknown to us 
and whom the most kindly-disposed among us treat as simple children. 

You can read the rest for yourselves. Grisaille is a separate branch 
of colour-decoration which belongs with the whole system of lighting 
and fenetrage, and will have to remain a closed book because the feel- 
ing and experience which explained it once are lost, and we cannot 
recover either. Such things must have been always felt rather than 
reasoned, like the irregularities in plan of the builders; the best work of 
the best times shows the same subtlety of sense as the dog shows in 
retrieving, or the bee in flying, but which tourists have lost. All we can 



i6o MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

do is to note that the grisailles were intended to have values. They 
were among the refinements of light and colour with which the apse of 
Chartres is so crowded that one must be content to feel what one can, 
and let the rest go. 

Understand, we cannot ! nothing proves that the greatest artists who 
ever lived have, in a logical sense, understood ! or that omnipotence has 
ever understood ! or that the utmost power of expression has ever been 
capable of expressing more than the reaction of one energy on another, 
but not of two on two ; and when one sits here, in the central axis of 
this complicated apse, one sees, in mere light alone, the reaction of 
hundreds of energies, although time has left only a wreck of what the 
artist put here. One of the best window spaces is wholly filled up by 
the fourteenth-century doorway to the chapel of Saint Piat, and only 
by looking at the two windows which correspond on the north does a 
curious inquirer get a notion of the probable loss. The same chapel 
more or less blocks the light of three other principal windows. The 
sun, the dust, the acids of dripping water, and the other works of time, 
have in seven hundred years corroded or worn away or altered the 
glass, especially on the south side. Windows have been darkened by 
time and mutilated by wilful injury. Scores of the panels are wholly 
restored, modern reproductions or imitations. Even after all this loss, 
the glass is probably the best-preserved, or perhaps the only preserved 
part of the decoration in colour, for we never shall know the colour- 
decoration of the vaults, the walls, the columns, or the floors. Only 
one point is fairly sure; — that on festivals, if not at other times, every 
foot of space was covered in some way or another, throughout the apse, 
with colour; either paint or tapestry or embroidery or Byzantine 
brocades and Oriental stuffs or rugs, lining the walls, covering the 
altars, and hiding the floor. Occasionally you happen upon illumi- 
nated manuscripts showing the interiors of chapels with their colour- 
decoration ; but everything has perished here except the glass. 

If one may judge from the glass of later centuries, the first impres- 



THE LEGENDARY WINDOWS i6i 

sion from the thirteenth-century windows ought to be disappointment. 
You should find them too effeminate, too soft, too small, and above all 
not particularly religious. Indeed, except for the nominal subjects of 
the legends, one sees nothing religious about them; the medallions, 
when studied with the binocle, turn out to be less religious than 
decorative. Saint Michael would not have felt at home here, and 
Saint Bernard would have turned from them with disapproval; but 
when they were put up, Saint Bernard was long dead, and Saint Mi- 
chael had yielded his place to the Virgin. This apse is all for her. At its 
entrance she sat, on either side, in the Belle- Verriere or as Our Lady of 
the Pillar, to receive the secrets and the prayers of suppliants who 
wished to address her directly in person ; there she bent down to our 
level, resumed her humanity, and felt our griefs and passions. Within, 
where the cross-lights fell through the wide columned space behind the 
high altar, was her withdrawing room, where the decorator and builder 
thought only of pleasing her. The very faults of the architecture and 
effeminacy of taste witness the artists' object. If the glassworkers had 
thought of themselves or of the public or even of the priests, they 
would have strained for effects, strong masses of colour, and striking 
subjects to impress the imagination. Nothing of the sort is even sug- 
gested. The great, awe-inspiring mosaic figure of the Byzantine half- 
dome was a splendid religious effect, but this artist had in his mind an 
altogether different thought. He was in the Virgin's employ; he was 
decorating her own chamber in her own palace; he wanted to please 
her; and he knew her tastes, even when she did not give him her per- 
sonal orders. To him, a dream would have been an order. The salary 
of the twelfth-century artist was out of all relation with the percentage 
of a twentieth-century decorator. The artist of 1200 was probably the 
last who cared little for the baron, not very much for the priest, and 
nothing for the public, unless he happened to be paid by the guild, 
and then he cared just to the extent of his hire, or, if he was himself a 
priest, not even for that. His pay was mostly of a different kind, and 



i62 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

was the same as that of the peasants who were hauHng the stone from 
the quarry at Bercheres while he was firing his ovens. His reward was 
to come when he should be promoted to decorate the Queen of Heav- 
en's palace in the New Jerusalem, and he served a mistress who knew 
better than he did what work was good and what was bad, and how to 
give him his right place.. Mary's taste was infallible; her knowledge 
like her power had no limits; she knew men's thoughts as well as acts, 
and could not be deceived. Probably, even in our own time, an artist 
might find his imagination considerably stimulated and his work pow- 
erfully improved if he knew that anything short of his best would 
bring him to the gallows, with or without trial by jury; but in the 
twelfth century the gallows was a trifle ; the Queen hardly considered 
it a punishment for an offence to her dignity. The artist was vividly 
aware that Mary disposed of hell. 

All this is written in full, on every stone and window of this apse, 
as legible as the legends to any one who cares to read. The artists were 
doing their best, not to please a swarm of flat-eared peasants or slow- 
witted barons, but to satisfy Mary, the Queen of Heaven, to whom the 
Kings and Queens of France were coming constantly for help, and 
whose absolute power was almost the only restraint recognized by 
Emperor, Pope, and clown. The colour-decoration is hers, and hers 
alone. For her the lights are subdued, the tones softened, the subjects 
selected, the feminine taste preserved. That other great ladies inter- 
ested themselves in the matter, even down to its technical refinements, 
is more than likely; indeed, in the central apside chapel, suggesting the 
-Auxerre grisaille that VioUet-le-Due mentioned, is a grisaille which 
bears the arms of Castile and Queen Blanche; further on, three other 
grisailles bear also the famous castles, but this is by no means the 
strongest proof of feminine taste. The difficulty would be rather to 
find a touch of certainly masculine taste in the whole apse. 

Since the central apside chapel is the most important, we can begin 
with the windows there, bearing in mind that the subject of the central 



THE LEGENDARY WINDOWS 163 

window was the Life of Christ, dictated by rule or custom. On Christ's 
left hand is the window of Saint Peter; next him is Saint Paul. All are 
much restored ; thirty- three of the medallions are wholly new. Oppo- 
site Saint Peter, at Christ's, right hand, is the window of Saint Simon 
and Saint Jude; and next is the grisaille with the arms of Castile. If 
these windows were ordered between 1205 and 1210, Blanche, who was 
born in 1187, and married in 1200, would have been a young princess 
of twenty or twenty-five when she gave this window in grisaille to 
regulate and harmonize and soften the lighting of the Virgin's boudoir. 
The central chapel must be taken to be the most serious, the most 
studied, and the oldest of the chapels in the church, above the crypt. 
The windows here should rank in importance next to the lancets of the 
west front which are only about sixty years earlier. They show fully 
that difference. 

Here one must see for one's self. Few artists know much about it, 
and still fewer care for an art which has been quite dead these four 
hundred years. The ruins of Nippur would hardly be more intelligible 
to the ordinary architect of English tradition than these twelfth- 
century efforts of the builders of Chartres. Even the learning of 
Viollet-le-Duc was at fault in dealing with a building so personal as 
this, the history of which is almost wholly lost. This central chapel 
must have been meant to give tone to the apse, and it shows with the 
colour-decoration of a queen's salon, a subject-decoration too serious 
for the amusement of heretics. One sees at a glance that the subject- 
decoration was inspired by church-custom, while colour was an experi- 
ment and the decorators of this enormous window space were at lib- 
erty as colourists to please the Countess of Chartres and the Princess 
Blanche and the Duchess of Brittany, without much regarding the 
opinions of the late Bernard of Clairvaux or even Augustine of Hippo, 
since the great ladies of the Court knew better than the Saints what 
would suit the Virgin. 

The subject of the central window was prescribed by tradition. 



i64 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

Christ is the Church, and In this church he and his Mother are one; 
therefore the Hfe of Christ is the subject of the central window, but 
the treatment is the Virgin's, as the colours show, and as the absence 
of every influence but hers, including the Crucifixion, proves officially. 
Saint Peter and Saint Paul are in their proper place as the two great 
ministers of the throne who represent the two great parties in western 
religion, the Jewish and the Gentile. Opposite them, balancing by their 
family influence the weight of delegated power, are two of Mary's 
nephews, Simon and Jude; but this subject branches off again into 
matters so personal to Mary that Simon and Jude require closer 
acquaintance. One must study a new guidebook — the "Golden 
Legend," by the blessed James, Bishop of Genoa and member of the 
order of Dominic, who was born at Varazze or Voragio in almost the 
same year that Thomas was born at Aquino, and whose "Legenda 
Aurea," written about the middle of the thirteenth century, was more 
popular history than the Bible itself, and more generally consulted as 
authority. The decorators of the thirteenth century got their motives 
quite outside the Bible, in sources that James of Genoa compiled into 
a volume almost as fascinating as the "Fioretti of Saint Francis." 

According to the "Golden Legend" and the tradition accepted in 
Jerusalem by pilgrims and crusaders, Mary's family connection was 
large. It appears that her mother Anne was three times married, and 
by each husband had a daughter Mary, so that there were three 
Marys, half-sisters. 

Joachim — Anne — Cleophas — Salome 



Joseph — Mary Alpheus — Mary Mary — Zebedee . 



Christ James Joseph Simon Jude James John 

the Minor the the Major the Evangelist 

Apostle Just St. lago of Compostella 

Simon and Jude were, therefore, nephews of Mary and cousins of 
Christ, whose lives were evidence of the truth not merely of Scripture, 



THE LEGENDARY WINDOWS 165 

but specially of the private and family distinction of their aunt, the 
Virgin Mother of Christ. They were selected, rather than their broth- 
ers, or cousins James and John, for the conspicuous honour of standing 
opposite Peter and Paul, doubtless by reason of some merit of their 
own, but perhaps also because in art the two counted as one, and 
therefore the one window offered two witnesses, which allowed the 
artist to insert a grisaille in place of another legendary window 
to complete the chapel on their right. According to VioUgt-le-Duc, 
the grisaille in this position regulates the light and so completes the 
effect. 

If custom prescribed a general rule for the central chapel, it seems 
to have left great freedom in the windows near by. At Chartres the 
curved projection that contains the next two windows was not a 
chapel, but only a window-bay, for the sake of the windows, and, if the 
artists aimed at pleasing the Virgin, they would put their best work 
there. At Bourges in the same relative place are three of the best win- 
dows in the building: — the Prodigal Son, the New Alliance and the 
Good Samaritan; all of them full of life, story, and colour, with little 
reference to a worship or a saint. At Chartres the choice is still more 
striking, and the windows are also the best in the building, after the 
twelfth-century glass of the west front. The first, which comes next to 
Blanche's grisaille in the central chapel, is given to another nephew of 
Mary and apostle of Christ, Saint James the Major, whose life is 
recorded in the proper Bible Dictionaries, with a terminal remark as 
follows : — 

For legends respecting his death and his connections with Spain, see the Roman 
Breviary, in which the heaHng of a paralytic and the conversion of Hermogenes are 
attributed to him, and where it is asserted that he preached the Gospel in Spain, 
and that his remains were translated to Compostella. ... As there is no shadow of 
foundation for any of the legends here referred to, we pass them by without further 
notice. Even Baronius shows himself ashamed of them. . . . 

If the learned Baronius thought himself required to show shame for 
all the legends that pass as history, he must have suffered cruelly dur- 



i66 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

ing his laborious life, and his sufferings would not have been confined 
to the annals of the Church; but the historical accuracy of the glass 
windows is not our affair, nor are historians especially concerned in the 
events of the Virgin's life, whether recorded or legendary. Religion is, 
or ought to be, a feeling, and the thirteenth-century windows are origi- 
nal documents, much more historical than any recorded in the Bible, 
since their inspiration is a different thing from their authority. The 
true life of Saint James or Saint Jude or any other of the apostles, did 
not, in the opinion of the ladies in the Court of France, furnish sub- 
jects agreeable enough to decorate the palace of the Queen of Heaven ; 
and that they were right, any one must feel, who compares these two 
windows with subjects of dogma. Saint James, better known as San- 
tiago of Compostella, was a compliment to the young Dauphine — 
before Dauphines existed — the Princess Blanche of Castile, whose 
arms, or castles, are on the grisaille window next to it. Perhaps she 
chose him to stand there. Certainly her hand is seen plainly enough 
throughout the church to warrant suspecting it here. As a nephew, 
Saint James was dear to the Virgin, but, as a friend to Spain, still more 
dear to Blanche, and it is not likely that pure accident caused three 
adjacent windows to take a Spanish tone. 

The Saint James in whom the thirteenth century delighted, and 
whose windows one sees at Bourges, Tours, and wherever the scallop- 
shell tells of the pilgrim, belongs not to the Bible but to the "Golden 
Legend." This window was given by the Merchant Tailors whose sig- 
nature appears at the bottom, in the corners, in two pictures that paint 
the tailor's shop of Chartres in the first quarter of the thirteenth cen- 
tury. The shop-boy takes cloth from chests for his master to show to 
customers, and to measure off by his ell. The story of Saint James 
begins in the lower panel, where he receives his mission from Christ. 
Above, on the right, he seems to be preaching. On the left appears 
a figure which tells the reason for the popularity of the story. It is 
Almogenes, or in the Latin, Hermogenes, a famous magician in great 



THE LEGENDARY WINDOWS 167 

credit among the Pharisees, who has the command of demons, as you 
see, for behind his shoulder, standing, a Httle demon is perched, while 
he orders his pupil Filetus to convert James. Next, James is shown 
in discussion with a group of Hsteners. Filetus gives him a volume 
of false doctrine. Almogenes then further Instructs Filetus. James is 
led away by a rope, curing a paralytic as he goes. He sends his cloak 
to Filetus to drive away the demon. Filetus receives the cloak, and 
the droll little demon departs in tears. Almogenes, losing his temper, 
sends two demons, with horns on their heads and clubs In their hands, 
to reason with James ; who sends them back to remonstrate with Almo- 
genes. The demons then bind Almogenes and bring him before James, 
who discusses differences with him until Almogenes burns his books 
of magic and prostrates himself before the Saint. Both are then 
brought before Herod, and Almogenes breaks a pretty heathen idol, 
while James goes to prison. A panel comes In here, out of place, show- 
ing Almogenes enchanting Filetus, and the demon entering Into pos- 
session of him. Then Almogenes is seen being very roughly handled by 
a young Jew, while the bystanders seem to approve. James next 
makes Almogenes throw his books of magic into the sea ; both are led 
away to execution, curing the infirm on their way; their heads are cut 
off; and, at the top, God blesses the orb of the world. 

That this window was intended to amuse the Virgin seems quite as 
reasonable an Idea as that It should have been made to Instruct the 
people, or us. Its humour was as humorous then as now, for the 
French of the thirteenth century loved humour even In churches, as 
their grotesques proclaim. The Saint James window is a tale of magic, 
told with the vivacity of a fabliau; but If Its motive of amusement 
seems still a forced idea, we can pass on, at once, to the companion 
window which holds the best position in the church, where, in the 
usual cathedral, one expects to find Saint John or some other apostle; 
or Saint Joseph; or a doctrinal lesson such as that called the New 
Alliance where the Old and New Testaments are united. The window 



i68 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

which the artists have set up here is regarded as the best of the 
thirteenth-century windows, and is the least rehgious. 

The subject is nothing less than the ** Chanson de Roland" in pictures 
of coloured glass, set in a border worth comparing at leisure with the 
twelfth-century borders of the western lancets. Even at Chartres, the 
artists could not risk displeasing the Virgin and the Church by follow- 
ing a wholly profane work like the " Chanson" itself, and Roland had 
no place in religion. He could be introduced only through Charle- 
magne, who had almost as little right there as he. The twelfth century 
had made persistent efforts to get Charlemagne into the Church, and 
the Church had made very little effort to keep him out; yet by the year 
1200, Charlemagne had not been sainted except by the an ti- Pope 
Pascal HI in 1165, although there was a popular belief, supported in 
Spain by the necessary documents, that Pope Calixtus II in 11 22 had 
declared the so-called Chronicle of Archbishop Turpin to be authentic. 
The Bishop of Chartres in 1200 was very much too enlightened a pre- 
late to accept the Chronicle or Turpin or Charlemagne himself, still 
less Roland and Thierry, as authentic in sanctity; but if the young and 
beautiful Dauphine of France, and her cousins of Chartres, and their 
artists, warmly believed that the Virgin would be pleased by the story 
of Charlemagne and Roland, the Bishop might have let them have 
their way in spite of the irregularity. That the window was an irregu- 
larity, is plain; that it has always been immensely admired, is certain; 
and that Bishop Renaud must have given his assent to it, is not to be 
denied. 
, The most elaborate account of this window can be found in Male's 
"Art Religieux" (pp. 444-50). Its feeling or motive Is quite another 
matter, as it is with the statuary on the north porch. The Furriers or 
Fur Merchants paid for the Charlemagne window, and their signature 
stands at the bottom, where a merchant shows a fur-lined cloak to his 
customer. That Mary was personally interested in furs, no authority 
seems to affirm, but that Blanche and Isabel and every lady of the 



THE LEGENDARY WINDOWS 169 

Court, as well as every king and every count, in that day, took keen 
interest in the subject, is proved by the prices they paid, and the quan- 
tities they wore. Not even the Merchant Tailors had a better standing 
at Court than the Furriers, which may account for their standing so 
near the Virgin. Whatever the cause, the Furriers were allowed to put 
their signature here, side by side with the Tailors, and next to the 
Princess Blanche. Their gift warranted it. Above the signature, in the 
first panel, the Emperor Constantine is seen, asleep, in Constantinople, 
on an elaborate bed, while an angel is giving him the order to seek aid 
from Charlemagne against the Saracens. Charlemagne appears, in full 
armour of the year 1200, on horseback. Then Charlemagne, sainted, 
wearing his halo, converses with two bishops on the subject of a cru- 
sade for the rescue of Constantine. In the next scene, he arrives at 
the gates of Constantinople where Constantine receives him. The fifth 
picture is most interesting; Charlemagne has advanced with his 
knights and attacks the Saracens; the Franks wear coats-of-mail, and 
carry long, pointed shields; the infidels carry round shields; Charle- 
magne, wearing a crown, strikes off with one blow of his sword the 
head of a Saracen emir; but the battle is desperate; the chargers are at 
full gallop, and a Saracen is striking at Charlemagne with his battle- 
axe. After the victory has been won, the Emperor Constantine 
rewards Charlemagne by the priceless gift of three chasses or reli- 
quaries, containing a piece of the true Cross ; the Suaire or grave-cloth 
of the Saviour; and a tunic of the Virgin. Charlemagne then returns to 
France, and in the next medallion presents the three chasses and the 
crown of the Saracen king to the church at Aix, which to a French 
audience meant the Abbey of Saint-Denis. This scene closes the first 
volume of the story. 

The second part opens on Charlemagne, seated between two per- 
sons, looking up to heaven at the Milky Way, called then the Way of 
Saint James, which directs him to the grave of Saint James in Spain. 
Saint James himself appears to Charlemagne in a dream, and orders 



170 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

him to redeem the tomb from the infidels. Then Charlemagne sets out, 
with Archbishop Turpin of Rheims and knights. In presence of his 
army he dismounts and implores the aid of God. Then he arrives 
before Pampeluna and transfixes with his lance the Saracen chief as he 
flies into the city. Mounted, he directs workmen to construct a church 
in honour of Saint James; a little cloud figures the hand of God. 
Next is shown the miracle of the lances ; stuck in the ground at night, 
they are found in the morning to have burst into foliage, prefiguring 
martyrdom. Two thousand people perish in battle. Then begins the 
story of Roland which the artists and donors are so eager to tell, know- 
ing, as they do, that what has so deeply interested men and women on 
earth, must interest Mary who loves them. You see Archbishop Tur- 
pin celebrating mass when an angel appears, to warn him of Roland's 
fate. Then Roland himself, also wearing a halo, is introduced, in the 
act of killing the giant Ferragus. The combat of Roland and Ferragus 
is at the top, out of sequence, as often happens in the legendary win- 
dows. Charlemagne and his army are seen marching homeward 
through the Pyrenees, while Roland winds his horn and splits the rock 
without being able to break Durendal. Thierry, likewise sainted, 
brings water to Roland in a helmet. At last Thierry announces 
Roland's death. At the top, on either side of Roland and Ferragus, is 
an angel with incense. 

The execution of this window is said to be superb. Of the colour, 
and its relations with that of the Saint James, one needs time and long 
acquaintance to learn the value. In the feeling, compared with that of 
the twelfth century, one needs no time in order to see a change. These 
two windows are as French and as modern as a picture of Lancret ; they 
are pure art, as simply decorative as the decorations of the Grand 
Opera. The thirteenth century knew more about religion and decora- 
tion than the twentieth century will ever learn. The windows were 
neither symbolic nor mystical, nor more religious than they pre- 
tended to be. That they are more intelligent or more costly or more 



THE LEGENDARY WINDOWS 171 

effective is nothing to the purpose, so long as one grants that the com- 
bat of Roland and Ferragus, or Roland winding his olifant, or Charle- 
magne cutting off heads and transfixing Moors, were subjects never 
intended to teach religion or instruct the ignorant, but to please the 
Queen of Heaven as they pleased the queens of earth with a roman, not 
in verse but in colour, as near as possible to decorative perfection. 
Instinctively one looks to the corresponding bay, opposite, to see what 
the artists could have done to balance these two great efforts of their 
art; but the bay opposite is now occupied by the entrance to Saint 
Fiat's chapel and one does not know what changes may have been 
made in the fourteenth century to rearrange the glass; yet, even as it 
now stands, the Sylvester window which corresponds to the Charle- 
magne is, as glass, the strongest in the whole cathedral. In the next 
chapel, on our left, come the martyrs, with Saint Stephen, the first 
martyr, in the middle window. Naturally the subject is more serious, 
but the colour is not differently treated. A step further, and you see 
the artists returning to their lighter subjects. The stories of Saint 
Julian and Saint Thomas are more amusing than the plots of half 
the thirteenth-century romances, and not very much more religious. 
The subject of Saint Thomas is a pendant to that of Saint James, for 
Saint Thomas was a great traveller and an architect, who carried 
Mary's worship to India as Saint James carried it to Spain. Here is 
the amusement of many days in studying the stories, the colour and 
the execution of these windows, with the help of the "Monographs" of 
Chartres and Bourges or the "Golden Legend" and occasional visits 
to Le Mans, Tours, Clermont Ferrand, and other cathedrals; but, in 
passing, one has to note that the window of Saint Thomas was given 
by France, and bears the royal arms, perhaps for Philip Augustus the 
King; while the window of Saint Julian was given by the Carpenters 
and Coopers. One feels no need to explain how it happens that the 
taste of the royal family, and of their tailors, furriers, carpenters, and 
coopers, should fit so marvellously, one with another, and with that of 



172 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

the Virgin; but one can compare with theirs the taste of the Stone- 
workers opposite, in the window of Saint Sylvester and Saint Melchi- 
ades, whose blues almost kill the Charlemagne itself, and of the Tan- 
ners in that of Saint Thomas of Canterbury; or, in the last chapel on 
the south side, with that of the Shoemakers in the window to Saint 
Martin, attributed for some reason to a certain Clemens vitrearius 
Carnutensis, whose name is on a window in the cathedral of Rouen. 
The name tells nothing, even if the identity could be proved. Clement 
the glassmaker may have worked on his own account, or for others; 
the glass differs only in refinements of taste or perhaps of cost. Nicolas 
Lescine, the canon, or Geoffroi Chardonnel, may have been less rich 
than the Bakers, and even the Furriers may have not had the revenues 
of the King; but some controlling hand has given more or less identical 
taste to all. 

What one can least explain is the reason why sonie windows, that 
should be here, are elsewhere. In most churches, one finds in the choir 
a window of doctrine, such as the so-called New Alliance, but here the 
New Alliance is banished to the nave. Besides the costly Charlemagne 
and Saint James windows in the apse, the Furriers and Drapers gave 
several others, and one of these seems particularly suited to serve as 
companion to Saint Thomas, Saint James, and Saint Julian, so that it 
is best taken with these while comparing them. It is in the nave, the 
third window from the new tower, in the north aisle, — the window of 
Saint Eustace. The story and treatment and beauty of the work would 
have warranted making it a pendant to Almogenes, in the bay now 
serving as the door to Saint Fiat's chapel, which should have been the 
most effective of all the positions in the church for a legendary story. 
Saint Eustace, whose name was Placidas, commanded the guards of 
the Emperor Trajan. One day he went out hunting with huntsmen 
and hounds, as the legend in the lower panel of the window begins; a 
pretty picture of a stag hunt about the year 1200; followed by one still 
prettier, where the stag, after leaping upon a rock, has turned, and 



THE LEGENDARY WINDOWS 173 

shows a crucifix between his horns, the stag on one side balancing the 
horse on the other, while Placidas on his knees yields to the miracle of 
Christ. Then Placidas is baptized as Eustace; and in the centre, you 
see him with his wife and two children — another charming composi- 
tion — leaving the city. Four small panels in the corners are said to 
contain the signatures of the Drapers and Furriers. Above, the story 
of adventure goes on, showing Eustace bargaining with a shipmaster 
for his passage; his embarcation with wife and children, and their 
arrival at some shore, where the two children have landed, and the 
master drives Eustace after them while he detains the wife. Four small 
panels here have not been identified, but the legend was no doubt 
familiar to the Middle Ages, and they knew how Eustace and the 
children came to a river, where you can see a pink lion carrying off 
one child, while a wolf, which has seized the other, is attacked by 
shepherds and dogs. The children are rescued, and the wife reappears, 
on her knees before her lord, telling of her escape from the shipmas- 
ter, while the children stand behind; and then the reunited family, 
restored to the Emperor's favour, is seen feasting and happy. At last 
Eustace refuses to offer a sacrifice to a graceful antique idol, and is 
then shut up, with all his family, in a brazen bull; a fire is kindled 
beneath it; and, from above, a hand confers the crown of martyrdom. 
Another subject, which should have been placed in the apse, stands 
in a singular Isolation which has struck many of the students in this 
branch of church learning. At Sens, Saint Eustace Is in the choir, and 
by his side is the Prodigal Son. At Bourges also the Prodigal Son Is 
In the choir. At Chartres, he Is banished to the north transept, where 
you will find him in the window next the nave, almost as though he 
were In disgrace ; yet the glass is said to be very fine, among the best 
In the church, while the story Is told with rather more vivacity than 
usual ; and as far as colour and execution go, the window has an air of 
age and quality higher than the average. At the bottom you see the 
signature of the corporation of Butchers. The window at Bourges was 



174 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

given by the Tanners. The story begins with the picture showing the 
younger son asking the father for his share of the inheritance, which he 
receives in the next panel, and proceeds, on horseback, to spend, as one 
cannot help suspecting, at Paris, in the Latin Quarter, where he is seen 
arriving, welcomed by two ladies. No one has offered to explain why 
Chartres should consider two ladies theologically more correct than 
one; or why Sens should fix on three, or why Bourges should require 
six. Perhaps this was left to the artist's fancy; but, before quitting the 
twelfth century, we shall see that the usual young man who took his 
share of patrimony and went up to study in the Latin Quarter, found 
two schools of scholastic teaching, one called Realism, the other 
Nominalism, each of which in turn the Church had been obliged to 
condemn. Meanwhile the Prodigal Son is seen feasting with them, and 
is crowned with flowers, like a new Abelard, singing his songs to 
Heloise, until his religious capital is exhausted, and he is dragged out 
of bed, to be driven naked from the house with sticks, in this also 
resembling Abelard. At Bourges he is gently turned out; at Sens he is 
dragged away by three devils. Then he seeks service, and is seen 
knocking acorns from boughs, to feed his employer's swine; but, 
among the thousands of young men who must have come here directly 
from the schools, nine in every ten said that he was teaching letters 
to his employer's children or lecturing to the students of the Latin 
Quarter. At last he decides to return to his father, — possibly the 
Archbishop of Paris or the Abbot of Saint-Denis, — who receives him 
with open arms, and gives him a new robe, which to the ribald student 
would mean a church living — an abbey, perhaps Saint Gildas-de- 
Rhuys in Brittany, or elsewhere. The fatted calf is killed, the feast is 
begun, and the elder son, whom the malicious student would name Ber- 
nard, appears in order to make protest. Above, God, on His throne, 
blesses the globe of the world. 

The original symbol of the Prodigal Son was a rather different form 
of prodigality. According to the Church interpretation, the Father 




cHartres: the prodigal son window 



THE LEGENDARY WINDOWS 175 

had two sons ; the older was the people of the Jews ; the younger, the 
Gentiles. The Father divided his substance between them, giving to 
the older the divine law, to the younger, the law of nature. The 
younger went off and dissipated his substance, as one must believe, on 
Aristotle; but repented and returned when the Father sacrificed the 
victim — Christ — as the symbol of reunion. That the Synagogue 
also accepts the sacrifice is not so clear; but the Church clung to the 
idea of converting the Synagogue as a necessary proof of Christ's 
divine character. Not until about the time when this window 
may have been made, did the new Church, under the influence of 
Saint Dominic, abandon the Jews and turn in despair to the Gentiles 
alone. 

The old symbolism belonged to the fourth and fifth centuries, and, 
as told by the Jesuit fathers Martin and Cahier in their " Monograph " 
of Bourges, it should have pleased the Virgin who was particularly 
loved by the young, and habitually showed her attachment to them. 
At Bourges the window stands next the central chapel of the apse, 
where at Chartres is the entrance to Saint Fiat's chapel ; but Bourges 
did not belong to Notre Dame, nor did Sens. The story of the prodigal 
sons of these years from 1200 to 1230 lends the window a little personal 
interest that the Prodigal Son of Saint Luke's Gospel could hardly 
have had even to thirteenth-century penitents. Neither the Church 
nor the Crown loved prodigal sons. So far from killing fatted calves 
for them, the bishops in 1209 burned no less than ten in Paris for too 
great intimacy with Arab and Jew disciples of Aristotle. The position 
of the Bishop of Chartres between the schools had been always awk- 
ward. As for Blanche of Castile, her first son, afterwards Saint Louis, 
was born in 12 15; and after that time no Prodigal Son was likely to be 
welcomed in any society which she frequented. For her, above all other 
women on earth or in heaven, prodigal sons felt most antipathy, until, 
in 1229, the quarrel became so violent that she turned her police on 
them and beat a number to death in the streets. They retaliated with- 



176 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

out regard for loyalty or decency, being far from model youth and 
prone to relapses from virtue, even when forgiven and beneficed. 

The Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven, showed no prejudice against 
prodigal sons, or even prodigal daughters. She would hardly, of her own 
accord, have ordered such persons out of her apse, when Saint Stephen 
at Bourges and Sens showed no such puritanism; yet the Chartres 
window is put away in the north transept. Even there it still stands 
opposite the Virgin of the Pillar, on the women's and Queen Blanche's 
side of the church, and in an excellent position, better seen from the 
choir than some of the windows in the choir itself, because the late 
summer sun shines full upon it, and carries its colours far into the apse. 
This may have been one of the many instances of tastes in the Virgin 
which were almost too imperial for her official court. Omniscient as 
Mary was, she knew no difference between the Blanches of Castile and 
the students of the Latin Quarter. She was rather fond of prodigals, 
and gentle toward the ladies who consumed the prodigal's substance. 
She admitted Mary Magdalen and Mary the Gipsy to her society. She 
fretted little about Aristotle so long as the prodigal adored her, and 
naturally the prodigal adored her almost to the exclusion of the Trin- 
ity. She always cared less for her dignity than was to be wished. 
Especially in the nave and on the porch, among the peasants, she liked 
to appear as one of themselves; she insisted on lying in bed, in a stable, 
with the cows and asses about her, and her baby in a cradle by the bed- 
side, as though she had suffered like other women, though the Church 
insisted she had not. Her husband, Saint Joseph, was notoriously 
.uncomfortable in her Court, and always preferred to get as near to the 
door as he could. The choir at Chartres, on the contrary, was aristo- 
cratic ; every window there had a court quality, even down to the con- 
temporary Thomas A'Becket, the fashionable martyr of good society. 
Theology was put into the transepts or still further away in the nave 
where the window of the New Alliance elbows the Prodigal Son. Even 
to Blanche of Castile, Mary was neither a philanthropist nor theologist 



THE LEGENDARY WINDOWS 177 

nor merely a mother, — she was an absolute Empress, and whatever 
she said was obeyed, but sometimes she seems to have willed an order 
that worried some of her most powerful servants. 

Mary chose to put her Prodigal into the transept, and one would 
like to know the reason. Was it a concession to the Bishop or the 
Queen? Or was it to please the common people that these familiar 
picture-books, with their popular interest, like the Good Samaritan 
and the Prodigal Son, were put on the walls of the great public hall? 
This can hardly be, since the people would surely have preferred the 
Charlemagne and Saint James to any other. We shall never know; but 
sitting here in the subdued afternoon light of the apse, one goes on for 
hours reading the open volumes of colour, and listening to the steady 
discussion by the architects, artists, priests, princes, and princesses of 
the thirteenth century about the arrangements of this apse. However 
strong-willed they might be, each in turn whether priest, or noble, or 
glassworker, would have certainly appealed to the Virgin and one can 
imagine the architect still beside us, in the growing dusk of evening, 
mentally praying, as he looked at the work of a finished day: "Lady 
Virgin, show me what you like best! The central chapel is correct, I 
know. The Lady Blanche's grisaille veils the rather strong blue tone 
nicely, and I am confident it will suit you. The Charlemagne window 
seems to me very successful, but the Bishop feels not at all easy about 
it, and I should never have dared put it here if the Lady Blanche had 
not insisted on a Spanish bay. To balance at once both the subjects 
and the colour, we have tried the Stephen window in the next chapel, 
with more red; but if Saint Stephen is not good enough to satisfy you, 
we have tried again with Saint Julian, whose story is really worth 
telling you as we tell it; and with him we have put Saint Thomas 
because you loved him and gave him your girdle. I do not myself care 
so very much for Saint Thomas of Canterbury opposite, though the 
Count is wild about it, and the Bishop wants it; but the Sylvester is 
stupendous in the morning sun. What troubles me most is the first 



178 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

right-hand bay. The princesses would not have let me put the Prodi- 
gal Son there, even if it were made for the place. I 've nothing else 
good enough to balance the Charlemagne unless it be the Eustace. 
Gracious Lady, what ought I to do? Forgive me my blunders, my 
stupidity, my wretched want of taste and feeling! I love and adore 
you! All that I am, I am for you! If I cannot please you, I care not 
for Heaven! but without your help, I am lost!" 

Upon my word, you may sit here forever imagining such appeals, 
and the endless discussions and criticisms that were heard every day, 
under these vaults, seven hundred years ago. That the Virgin answered 
the questions is my firm belief, just as it is my conviction that she did 
not answer them elsewhere. One sees her personal presence on every 
side. Any one can feel it who will only consent to feel like a child. 
Sitting here any Sunday afternoon, while the voices of the children of 
the maitrise are chanting in the choir, — your mind held in the grasp 
of the strong lines and shadows of the architecture; your eyes flooded 
with the autumn tones of the glass ; your ears drowned with the pur- 
ity of the voices ;one sense reacting upon another until sensation reaches 
the limit of its range, — you, or any other lost soul, could, if you cared 
to look and listen, feel a sense beyond the human ready to reveal a 
sense divine that would make that world once more intelligible, and 
would bring the Virgin to life again, in all the depths of feeling 
which she shows here, — in lines, vaults, chapels, colours, legends, 
chants, — more eloquent than the prayer-book, and more beautiful 
than the autumn sunlight; and any one willing to try could feel it like 
the child, reading new thought without end into the art he has studied 
a hundred times; but what is still more convincing, he could, at will, 
in an instant, shatter the whole art by calling into it a single motive 
of his own. 



CHAPTER X 

THE COURT OF THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN 

ALL artists love the sanctuary of the Christian Church, and all 
tourists love the rest. The reason becomes clear as one leaves the 
choir, and goes back to the broad, open hall of the nave. The choir was 
made not for the pilgrim but for the deity, and is as old as Adam, or 
perhaps older; at all events old enough to have existed in complete 
artistic and theological form, with the whole mystery of the Trinity, 
the Mother and Child, and even the Cross, thousands of years before 
Christ was born ; but the Christian Church not only took the sanctuary 
in hand, and gave it a new form, more beautiful and much more re- 
fined than the Romans or Greeks or Egyptians had ever imagined, but 
it also added the idea of the nave and transepts, and developed it into 
imperial splendour. The pilgrim-tourist feels at home in the nave be- 
cause it was built for him; the artist loves the sanctuary because he 
built it for God. 

Chartres was intended to hold ten thousand people easily, or fifteen 
thousand when crowded, and the decoration of this great space, though 
not a wholly new problem, had to be treated in a new way. Sancta 
Sofia was built by the Emperor Justinian, with all the resources of the 
Empire, in a single violent effort, in six years, and was decorated 
throughout with mosaics on a general scheme, with the unity that Em- 
pire and Church could give, when they acted together. The Norman 
Kings of Sicily, the richest princes of the twelfth century, were able 
to carry out a complete work of the most costly kind, in a single 
sustained effort from beginning to end, according to a given plan. 
Chartre was a local shrine, in an agricultural province, not even a part 
of the royal domain, and its cathedral was the work of society, without 
much more tie than the Virgin gave it. Socially Chartres, as far as its 



i8o MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

stone- work goes, seems to have been mostly rural ; its decoration, in 
the porches and transepts, is royal and feudal ; in the nave and choir it 
is chiefly bourgeois. The want of unity is much less surprising than the 
unity, but it is still evident, especially in the glass. The mosaics of Mon- 
reale begin and end ; they are a series ; their connection is artistic and 
theological at once; they have unity. The windows of Chartres have no 
sequence, and their charm is in variety, in individuality, and sometimes 
even in downright hostility to each other, reflecting the picturesque 
society that gave them. They have, too, the charm that the world has 
made no attempt to popularize them for its modern uses, so that, 
except for the useful little guide-book of the Abbe Clerval, one can see 
no clue to the legendary chaos; one has it to one's self, without much 
fear of being trampled upon by critics or Jew dealers in works of art; 
any Chartres beggar-woman can still pass a summer's day here, and 
never once be mortified by ignorance of things that every dealer in 
bric-^-brac is supposed to know. 

Yet the artists seem to have begun even here with some idea of 
sequence, for the first window in the north aisle, next the new tower, 
tells the story of Noah; but the next plunges into the local history 
of Chartres, and is devoted to Saint Lubin, a bishop of this diocese 
who died in or about the year 556, and was, for some reason, selected 
by the Wine-Merchants to represent them, as their interesting me- 
dallions show. Then follow three amusing subjects, charmingly treated : 
Saint Eustace, whose story has been told ; Joseph and his brethren ; and 
Saint Nicholas, the most popular saint of the thirteenth century, both 
in the Greek and in the Roman Churches. The sixth and last window 
on the north aisle of the nave is the New Alliance. 

Opposite these, in the south aisle, the series begins next the tower 
with John the Evangelist, followed by Saint Mary Magdalen, given 
by the Water-Carriers. The third, the Good Samaritan, given by the 
Shoemakers, has a rival at Sens which critics think even better. The 
fourth is the Death, Assumption, and Coronation of the Virgin. Then 



THE COURT OF THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN i8i 

comes the fifteenth-century Chapel of Vend6me, to compare the 
early and later glass. The sixth is, or was, devoted to the Virgin's 
Miracles at Chartres; but only one complete subject remains. 

These windows light the two aisles of the nave and decorate the 
lower walls of the church with a mass of colour and variety of line still 
practically intact in spite of much injury; but the windows of the tran- 
septs on the same level have almost disappeared, except the Prodigal 
Son and a border to what was once a Saint Lawrence, on the north ; 
and, on the south, part of a window to Saint Apollinaris of Ravenna, 
with an interesting hierarchy of angels above: — seraphim and cheru- 
bim with six wings, red and blue; Dominations; Powers; Principalities; 
all, except Thrones. 

All this seems to be simple enough, at least to the people for whom 
the nave was built, and to whom the windows were meant to speak. 
There is nothing esoteric here; nothing but what might have suited 
the great hall of a great palace. There is no difference in taste between 
the Virgin in the choir, and the Water- Carriers by the doorway. 
Blanche, the young Queen, liked the same colours, legends, and lines 
that her Grocers and Bakers liked. All equally loved the Virgin. There 
was not even a social difference. In the choir, Thibaut, the Count of 
Chartres, immediate lord of the province, let himself be put in a dark 
corner next the Belle Verriere, and left the Bakers to display their 
wealth in the most serious spot in the church, the central window of the 
central chapel, while in the nave and transepts all the lower windows 
that bear signatures were given by trades, as though that part of 
the church were abandoned to the commons. One might suppose that 
the feudal aristocracy would have fortified itself in the clerestory and 
upper windows, but even there the bourgeoisie invaded them, and you 
can see, with a glass, the Pastrycooks and Turners looking across at 
the Weavers and Curriers and Money-Changers, and the "Men of 
Tours." Beneath the throne of the Mother of God, there was no dis- 
tinction of gifts; and above it the distinction favoured the common- 



i82 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

alty. Of the seven immense windows above and around the high 
altar, which are designed as one composition, none was given by a 
prince or a noble. The Drapers, the Butchers, the Bakers, the Bankers 
are charged with the highest duties attached to the Virgin's service. 
Apparently neither Saint Louis, nor his father Louis VIII, nor his 
mother Blanche, nor his uncle Philippe Hurepel, nor his cousin Saint 
Ferdinand of Castile, nor his other cousin Pierre de Dreux, nor the 
Duchess Alix of Brittany, cared whether their portraits or armorial 
shields were thrust out of sight into corners by Pastrycooks and 
Teamsters, or took a whole wall of the church to themselves. The 
only relation that connects them is their common relation to the 
Virgin, but that is emphatic, and dominates the whole. 

It dominates us, too, if we reflect on it, even after seven hundred 
years that its meaning has faded. When one looks up to this display 
of splendour in the clerestory, and asks what was in the minds of the 
people who joined to produce, with such immense effort and at such 
self-sacrifice, this astonishing effect, the question seems to answer 
itself like an echo. With only half of an atrophied imagination, in a 
happy mood we could still see the nave and transepts filled with ten 
thousand people on their knees, and the Virgin, crowned and robed, 
seating herself on the embroidered cushion that covered her imperial 
throne; sparkling with gems; bearing in her right hand the sceptre, and 
in her lap the infant King; but, in the act of seating herself, we should 
see her pause a moment to look down with love and sympathy on us, — 
her people, — who pack the enormous hall, and throng far out beyond 
the open portals; while, an instant later, she glances up to see that her 
great lords, spiritual and temporal, the advisers of her judgment, the 
supports of her authority, the agents of her will, shall be in place; 
robed, mitred, armed; bearing the symbols of her authority and their 
office ; on horseback, lance in hand ; all of them ready at a sign to carry 
out a sentence of judgment or an errand of mercy; to touch with the 
sceptre or to strike with the sword ; and never err. 



THE COURT OF THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN 183 

There they still stand! unchanged, unfaded, as alive and complete 
as when they represented the real world, and the people below were the 
unreal and ephemeral pageant! Then the reality was the Queen of 
Heaven on her throne in the sanctuary, and her court in the glass ; not 
the queens or princes who were prostrating themselves, with the crowd, 
at her feet. These people knew the Virgin as well as they knew their 
own mothers; every jewel in her crown, every stitch of gold-embroid- 
ery in her many robes; every colour; every fold; every expression on 
the perfectly familiar features of her grave, imperial face; every care 
that lurked in the silent sadness of her power ; repeated over and over 
again, in stone, glass, ivory, enamel, wood; in every room, at the 
head of every bed, hanging on every neck, standing at every street- 
corner, the Virgin was as familiar to every one of them as the sun or 
the seasons ; far more familiar than their own earthly queen or countess, 
although these were no strangers in their daily life ; familiar from the 
earliest childhood to the last agony; in every joy and every sorrow and 
every danger; in every act and almost in every thought of life, the 
Virgin was present with a reality that never belonged to her Son or 
to the Trinity, and hardly to any earthly being, prelate, king, or 
kaiser; her daily life was as real to them as their own loyalty which 
brought to her the best they had to offer as the return for her bound- 
less sympathy; but while they knew the Virgin as though she were one 
of themselves, and because she had been one of themselves, they were 
not so familiar with all the officers of her court at Chartres; and pil- 
grims from abroad, like us, must always have looked with curious 
interest at the pageant. 

Far down the nave, next the western towers, the rank began with 
saints, prophets, and martyrs, of all ages and countries; local, like 
Saint Lubin; national, like Saint Martin of Tours and Saint Hilary of 
Poitiers; popular like Saint Nicholas; militant like Saint George; with- 
out order; symbols like Abraham and Isaac; the Virgin herself, holding 
on her lap the Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost; Christ with the Alpha 



i84 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

and Omega ; Moses and Saint Augustine ; Saint Peter ; Saint Mary the 
Egyptian; Saint Jerome; a whole throne-room of heavenly powers, 
repeating, within, the pageant carved on the porches and on the portals 
without. From the croisee in the centre, where the crowd is most dense, 
one sees the whole almost better than Mary sees it from her high altar, 
for there all the great rose windows flash in turn, and the three twelfth- 
century lancets glow on the western sun. When the eyes of the throng 
are directed to the north, the Rose of France strikes them almost with 
a physical shock of colour, and, from the south, the Rose of Dreux 
challenges the Rose of France. 

Every one knows that there is war between the two ! The thirteenth 
century has few secrets. There are no outsiders. We are one family as 
we are one Church. Every man and woman here, from Mary on her 
throne to the beggar on the porch, knows that Pierre de Dreux detests 
Blanche of Castile, and that their two windows carry on war across the 
very heart of the cathedral. Both unite only in asking help from Mary; 
but Blanche is a woman, alone in the world with young children to 
protect, and most women incline strongly to suspect that Mary will 
never desert her. Pierre, with all his masculine strength, is no courtier. 
He wants to rule by force. He carries the assertion of his sex into the 
very presence of the Queen of Heaven. 

The year happens to be 1230, when the roses may be supposed just 
finished and showing their whole splendour for the first time. Queen 
Blanche is forty- three years old, and her son Louis is fifteen. Blanche 
is a widow these four years, and Pierre a widower since 1221. Both are 
vregents and guardians for their heirs. They have necessarily carried 
their disputes before Mary. Queen Blanche claims for her son, who is to 
be Saint Louis, the place of honour at Mary's right hand ; she has taken 
possession of the north porch outside, and of the north transept within, 
and has filled the windows with glass, as she is filling the porch with 
statuary. Above is the huge rose; below are five long windows; and 
all proclaim the homage that France renders to the Queen of Heaven. 



THE COURT OF THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN 185 

The Rose of France shows in Its centre the Virgin in her majesty, 
seated, crowned, holding the sceptre with her right hand, while her 
left supports the infant Christ- King on her knees; which shows that 
she, too, is acting as regent for her Son. Round her, in a circle, are 
twelve medallions; four containing doves; four six- winged angels or 
Thrones; four angels of a lower order, but all symbolizing the gifts and 
endowments of the Queen of Heaven. Outside these are twelve more 
medallions with the Kings of Judah, and a third circle contains the 
twelve lesser prophets. So Mary sits, hedged in by all the divinity that 
graces earthly or heavenly kings ; while between the two outer circles 
are twelve quatrefoils bearing on a blue ground the golden lilies of 
France; and in each angle below the rose are four openings, showing 
alternately the lilies of Louis and the castles of Blanche. We who are 
below, the common people, understand that France claims to protect 
and defend the Virgin of Chartres, as her chief vassal, and that this 
ostentatious profusion of lilies and castles is intended not in honour 
of France, but as a demonstration of loyalty to Notre Dame, and an 
assertion of her rights as Queen Regent of Heaven against all comers, 
but particularly against Pierre, the rebel, who has the audacity to 
assert rival rights in the opposite transept. 

Beneath the rose are five long windows, very unlike the twelfth- 
century pendants to the western rose. These five windows blaze with 
red, and their splendour throws the Virgin above quite into the back- 
ground. The artists, who felt that the twelfth-century glass was too 
fine and too delicate for the new scale of the church, have not only 
enlarged their scale and coarsened their design, but have coarsened 
their colour-scheme also, discarding blue in order to crush us under the 
earthly majesty of red. These windows, too, bear the stamp and seal 
of Blanche's Spanish temper as energetically as though they bore her 
portrait. The great central figure, the tallest and most commanding 
in the whole church, is not the Virgin, but her mother Saint Anne, 
standing erect as on the trumeau of the door beneath, and holding the 



i86 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

infant Mary on her left arm. She wears no royal crown, but bears a 
flowered sceptre. The only other difference between Mary and her 
mother, that seems intended to strike attention, is that Mary sits, 
while her mother stands; but as though to proclaim still more distinctly 
that France supports the royal and divine pretensions of Saint Anne, 
Queen Blanche has put beneath the figure a great shield blazoned 
with the golden lilies on an azure ground. 

With singular insistence on this motive, Saint Anne has at either 
hand a royal court of her own, marked as her own by containing only 
figures from the Old Testament. Standing next on her right is Solo- 
mon, her Prime Minister, bringing wisdom in worldly counsel, and 
trampling on human folly. Beyond Wisdom stands Law, figured by 
Aaron with the Book, trampling on the lawless Pharaoh. Opposite them, 
on Saint Anne's left, is David, the energy of State, trampling on a Saul 
suggesting suspicions of a Saul de Dreux; while last, Melchisedec who 
is Faith, tramples on a disobedient Nebuchadnezzar Mauclerc. 

How can we, the common people, help seeing all this, and much 
more, when we know that Pierre de Dreux has been for years in con- 
stant strife with the Crown and the Church? He is very valiant and 
lion-hearted; — so say the chroniclers, priests though they are; — very 
skilful and experienced in war whether by land or sea; very adroit, 
with more sense than any other great lord in France; but restless, 
factious, and regardless of his word. Brave and bold as the day; full 
of courtesy and " largesse " ; but very hard on the clergy ; a good Chris- 
tian but a bad churchman ! Certainly the first man of his time, says 
Michelet! "I have never found any that sought to do me more ill 
than he," says Blanche, and Joinville gives her very words ; indeed, this 
year, 1230, she has summoned our own Bishop of Chartres among others 
to Paris in a court of peers, where Pierre has been found guilty of 
treason and deposed. War still continues, but Pierre must make sub- 
mission. Blanche has beaten him in politics and in the field ! Let us 
look round and see how he fares in theology and art! 



THE COURT OF THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN 187 

There is his rose — so beautiful that Blanche may well think it 
seeks to do hers ill ! As colour, judge for yourselves whether it holds its 
own against the flaming self-assertion of the opposite wall ! As subject, 
it asserts flat defiance of the monarchy of Queen Blanche. In the cen- 
tral circle, Christ as King is seated on a royal throne, both arms raised, 
one holding the golden cup of eternal priesthood, the other, blessing 
the world. Two great flambeaux burn beside Him. The four Apocalyp- 
tic figures surround and worship Him ; and in the concentric circles 
round the central medallion are the angels and the kings in a blaze of 
colour, symbolizing the New Jerusalem. 

All the force of the Apocalypse is there, and so is some of the weak- 
ness of theology, for, in the five great windows below, Pierre shows his 
training in the schools. Four of these windows represent what is called, 
for want of a better name, the New Alliance; the dependence of the 
New Testament on the Old ; but Pierre's choice in symbols was as mas- 
culine as that of Blanche was feminine. In each of the four windows, 
a gigantic Evangelist strides the shoulders of a colossal Prophet. 
Saint John rides on Ezekiel ; Saint Mark bestrides Daniel ; Saint Mat- 
thew is on the shoulders of Isaiah ; Saint Luke is carried by Jeremiah. 
The effect verges on the grotesque. The balance of Christ's Church 
seems uncertain. The Evangelists clutch the Prophets by the hair, and 
while the synagogue stands firm, the Church looks small, feeble, and 
vacillating. The new dispensation has not the air of mastery either 
physical or intellectual; the old gives it all the support it has, and, in 
the absence of Saint Paul, both old and new seem little concerned with 
the sympathies of Frenchmen. The synagogue is stronger than the 
Church, but even the Church is Jew. 

That Pierre could ever have meant this is not to be dreamed; but 
when the true scholar gets thoroughly to work, his logic is remorseless, 
his art is implacable, and his sense of humour is blighted. In the rose 
above, Pierre had asserted the exclusive authority of Christ in the New 
Jerusalem, and his scheme required him to show how the Church 



i88 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

rested on the Evangelists below, who in their turn had no visible support 
except what the Prophets gave them. Yet the artist may have had 
a reason for weakening the Evangelists, because there remained the 
Virgin! One dares no more than hint at a motive so disrespectful to 
the Evangelists ; but it is certainly true that, in the central window, 
immediately beneath the Christ, and His chief support, with the four 
staggering Evangelists and Prophets on either hand, the Virgin stands, 
and betrays no sign of weakness. 

The compliment is singularly masculine; a kind of twelfth-century 
flattery that might have softened the anger of Blanche herself, if the 
Virgin had been her own ; but the Virgin of Dreux is not the Virgin of 
France. No doubt she still wears her royal crown, and her head is 
circled with the halo; her right hand still holds the flowered sceptre, 
and her left the infant Christ, but she stands, and Christ is King. Note, 
too, that she stands directly opposite to her mother Saint Anne in the 
Rose of France, so as to place her one stage lower than the Virgin of 
France in the hierarchy. She is the Saint Anne of France, and shows 
it. "She is no longer," says the official Monograph, "that majestic 
queen who was seated on a throne, with her feet on the stool of honour; 
the personages have become less imposing and the heads show the 
decadence." She is the Virgin of Theology; she has her rights, and no 
more; but she is not the Virgin of Chartres. 

She, too, stands on an altar or pedestal, on which hangs a shield 
bearing the ermines, an exact counterpart of the royal shield beneath 
Saint Anne. In this excessive display of armorial bearings — for the 
two roses above are crowded with them — one likes to think that these 
great princes had in their minds not so much the thought of their own 
importance — which is a modern sort of religion — as the thought of 
their devotion to Mary. The assertion of power and attachment by one 
is met by the assertion of equal devotion by the other, and while both 
loudly proclaim their homage to the Virgin, each glares defiance across 
the church. Pierre meant the Queen of Heaven to know that, in case 



THE COURT OF THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN 189 

of need, her left hand was as good as her right, and truer; that the 
ermines were as well able to defend her as the lilies, and that Brit- 
tany would fight her battles as bravely as France. Whether his mean- 
ing carried with it more devotion to the Virgin or more defiance to 
France depends a little on the date of the windows, but, as a mere 
point of history, every one must allow that Pierre's promise of alle- 
giance was kept more faithfully by Brittany than that of Blanche and 
Saint Louis had been kept by France. 

The date seems to be fixed by the windows themselves. Beneath 
the Prophets kneel Pierre and his wife Alix, while their two children, 
Yolande and Jean, stand. Alix died in 1221. Jean was born in 12 17. 
Yolande was affianced in marriage in 1227, while a child, and given to 
Queen Blanche to be brought up as the future wife of her younger son 
John, then in his eighth year. When John died, Yolande was contracted 
to Thibaut of Champagne in 123 1, and Blanche is said to have written 
to Thibaut in consequence: "Sire Thibauld of Champagne, I have 
heard that you have covenanted and promised to take to wife the 
daughter of Count Perron of Brittany. Wherefore I charge you, if 
you do not wish to lose whatever you possess in the kingdom of France, 
not to do it. If you hold dear or love aught in the said kingdom, do it 
not." Whether Blanche wrote in these words or not, she certainly pre- 
vented the marriage, and Yolande remained single until 1238 when she 
married the Comte de la Marche, who was, by the way, almost as bit- 
ter an enemy of Blanche as Pierre had been ; but by that time both 
Blanche and Pierre had ceased to be regents. Yolande 's figure in the 
window is that of a girl, perhaps twelve or fourteen years old ; Jean is 
younger, certainly not more than eight or ten years of age; and the 
appearance of the two children shows that the window itself should 
date between 1225 and 1230, the year when Pierre de Dreux was 
condemned because he had renounced his homage to King Louis, 
declared war on him, and invited the King of England into France. As 
already told, Philippe Hurepel de Boulogne, the Comte de la Marche, 



190 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

Enguerrand de Couci, — nearly all the great nobles, — had been 
leagued with Pierre de Dreux since Blanche's regency began in 1226. 

That these transept windows harmonize at all, is due to the Virgin, 
not to the donors. At the time they were designed, supposing it to be 
during Blanche's regency (1226-36), the passions of these donors 
brought France to momentary ruin, and the Virgin in Blanche's Rose 
de France, as she looked across the church, could not see a single 
friend of Blanche. What is more curious, she saw enemies in plenty, 
and in full readiness for battle. We have seen in the centre of the small 
rose in the north transept, Philippe Hurepel still waiting her orders; 
across the nave, in another small rose of the south transept, sits Pierre 
de Dreux on his horse. The upper windows on the side walls of the 
choir are very interesting but impossible to see, even with the best 
glasses, from the floor of the church. Their sequence and dates have 
already been discussed ; but their feeling is shown by the character of 
the Virgin, who in French territory, next the north transept, is still the 
Virgin of France, but in Pierre's territory, next the Rose de Dreux, 
becomes again the Virgin of Dreux, who is absorbed in the Child, — 
not the Child absorbed in her, — and accordingly the window shows 
the chequers and ermines. 

The figures, like the stone figures outside, are the earliest of French 
art, before any school of painting fairly existed. Among them, one can 
see no friend of Blanche. Indeed, outside of her own immediate fam- 
ily and the Church, Blanche had no friend of much importance except 
the famous Thibaut of Champagne, the single member of the royal 
family who took her side and suffered for her sake, and who, as far 
as books tell, has no window or memorial here. One might suppose 
that Thibaut, who loved both Blanche and the Virgin, would have 
claimed a place, and perhaps he did; but one seeks him in vain. If 
Blanche had friends here, they are gone. Pierre de Dreux, lance in 
hand, openly defies her, and it was not on her brother-in-law Philippe 
Hurepel that she could depend for defence. 



THE COURT OF THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN 191 

This Is the court pageant of the Virgin that shows itself to the peo- 
ple who are kneeling at high mass. We, the public, whoever we are, — 
Chartrain, Breton, Norman, Angevin, Frenchman, Percherain, or 
what not, — know our local politics as intimately as our lords do, 
or even better, for our imaginations are active, and we do not love 
Blanche of Castile. We know how to read the passions that fill the 
church. From the north transept Blanche flames out on us in splendid 
reds and flings her Spanish castles in our face. From the south tran- 
sept Pierre retorts with a brutal energy which shows itself in the 
Prophets who serve as battle-chargers and in the Evangelists who serve 
as knights, — mounted warriors of faith, — whose great eyes follow 
us across the church and defy Saint Anne and her French shield oppo- 
site. Pierre was not effeminate; Blanche was fairly masculine. Between 
them, as a matter of sex, we can see little to choose; and, in any case, 
it is a family quarrel; they are all cousins; they are all equals on earth, 
and none means to submit to any superior except the Virgin and 
her Son in heaven. The Virgin is not afraid. She has seen many 
troubles worse than this; she knows how to manage perverse children, 
and if necessary she will shut them up in a darker room than ever 
their mothers kept open for them in this world. One has only to look 
at the Virgin to see! 

There she is, of course, looking down on us from the great window 
above the high altar, where we never forget her presence ! Is there a 
thought of disturbance there? Around the curve of the choir are seven 
great windows, without roses, filling the whole semicircle and the whole 
vault, forty-seven feet high, and meant to dominate the nave as far 
as the western portal, so that we may never forget how Mary fills 
her church without being disturbed by quarrels, and may understand 
why Saint Ferdinand and Saint Louis creep out of our sight, close by 
the Virgin's side, far up above brawls; and why France and Brittany 
hide their ugly or their splendid passions at the ends of the transepts, 
out of sight of the high altar where Mary is to sit in state as Queen 



192 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

with the young King on her lap. In an instant she will come, but we 
have a moment still to look about at the last great decoration of her 
palace, and see how the artists have arranged it. 

Since the building of Sancta Sofia, no artist has had such a chance. 
No doubt, Rheims and Amiens and Bourges and Beauvais, which are 
now building, may be even finer, but none of them is yet finished, and 
all must take their ideas from here. One would like, before looking at 
it, to think over the problem, as though it were new, and so choose the 
scheme that would suit us best if the decoration were to be done for 
the first time. The architecture is fixed ; we have to do only with the col- 
our of this mass of seven huge windows, forty-seven feet high, in the 
clerestory, round the curve of the choir, which close the vista of the 
church as viewed from the entrance. This vista is about three hundred 
and thirty feet long. The windows rise above a hundred feet. How 
ought this vast space to be filled? Should the perpendicular upward 
leap of the architecture be followed and accented by a perpendicular 
leap of colour? The decorators of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 
seem to have thought so, and made perpendicular architectural draw- 
ings in yellow that simulated gold, and lines that ran with the general 
lines of the building. Many fifteenth-century windows seem to be 
made up of florid Gothic details rising in stages to the vault. No doubt 
critics complained, and still complain, that the monotony of this 
scheme, and its cheapness of inteUigence, were objections; but at least 
the effect was light, decorative, and safe. The artist could not go far 
wrong and was still at liberty to do beautiful work, as can be seen in 
any number of churches scattered broadcast over Europe and swarm- 
ing in Paris and France. Oh the other hand, might not the artist dis- 
regard the architecture and fill the space with a climax of colour? Could 
he not unite the Roses of France and Dreux above the high altar in an 
overpowering outburst of purples and reds? The seventeenth century 
might have preferred to mass clouds and colours, and Michael Angelo, 
in the sixteenth, might have known how to do it. What we want is 



THE COURT OF THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN 193 

not the feeling of the artist so much as the feeling of Chartres. What 
shall it be — the jewelled brilliancy of the western windows, or the 
fierce self-assertion of Pierre Mauclerc, or the royal splendour of 
Queen Blanche, or the feminine grace and decorative refinement of the 
Charlemagne and Santiago windows in the apse? 

Never again in art was so splendid a problem offered, either before 
or since, for the artist of Chartres solved it, as he did the whole mat- 
ter of fenestration, and later artists could only offer variations on his 
work. You will see them at Bourges and Tours and in scores of thir- 
teenth and fourteenth and fifteenth and sixteenth century churches 
and windows, and perhaps in some of the twentieth century, — all 
of them interesting and some of them beautiful, — and far be it from 
us, mean and ignorant pilgrims of art, to condemn any intelligent effort 
to vary or improve the effect ; but we have set out to seek the feeling, 
and while we think of art in relation to ourselves, the sermon of 
Chartres, from beginning to end, teaches and preaches and insists 
and reiterates and hammers into our torpid minds the moral that 
the art of the Virgin was not that of her artists but her own. We 
inevitably think of our tastes ; they thought instinctively of hers. 

In the transepts, Queen Blanche and Duke Perron, in legal posses- 
sion of their territory, showed that they were thinking of each other 
as well as of the Virgin, and claimed loudly that they ought each to 
be first in the Virgin's favour; and they stand there in place, as the 
thirteenth century felt them. Subject to their fealty to Mary, the 
transepts belonged to them, and if Blanche did not, like Pierre, assert 
herself and her son on the Virgin's window, perhaps she thought the 
Virgin would resent Pierre's boldness the more by contrast with her 
own good taste. So far as is known, nowhere does Blanche appear in 
person at Chartres; she felt herself too near the Virgin to obtrude a 
useless image, or she was too deeply religious to ask anything for her- 
self. A queen who was to have two children sainted, to intercede for 
her at Mary's throne, stood in a solitude almost as unique as that of 



194 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

Mary, and might ignore the raw brutahties of a man-at-arms; but 
neither she nor Pierre has carried the quarrel into Mary's presence, 
nor has the Virgin condescended even to seem conscious of their tem- 
per. This is the theme of the artist — the purity, the beauty, the grace, 
and the infinite loftiness of Mary's nature, among the things of earth, 
and above the clamour of kings. 

Therefore, when we, and the crushed crowd of kneeling worshippers 
around us, lift our eyes at last after the miracle of the mass, we see, 
far above the high altar, high over all the agitation of prayer, the pas- 
sion of politics, the anguish of suffering, the terrors of sin, only the 
figure of the Virgin in majesty, looking down on her people, crowned, 
throned, glorified, with the infant Christ on her knees. She does not 
assert herself; probably she intends to be felt rather than feared. Com- 
pared with the Greek Virgin, as you see her, for example, at Torcello, 
the Chartres Virgin is retiring and hardly important enough for the 
place. She is not exaggerated either in scale, drawing, or colour. She 
shows not a sign of self-consciousness, not an effort for brilliancy, not 
a trace of stage effect — hardly even a thought of herself, except that 
she is at home, among her own people, where she is loved and known 
as well as she knows them. The seven great windows are one compo- 
sition ; and it is plain that the artist, had he been ordered to make an 
exhibition of power, could have overwhelmed us with a storm of pur- 
ple, red, yellows, or given us a Virgin of Passion who would have torn 
the vault asunder; his ability is never in doubt, and if he has kept 
true to the spirit of the western portal and the twelfth-century, it is be- 
cause the Virgin of Chartres was the Virgin of Grace, and ordered him 
to paint her so. One shudders to think how a single false note — a sug- 
gestion of meanness, in this climax of line and colour — would bring 
the whole fabric down in ruins on the eighteenth-century meanness of 
the choir below ; and one notes, almost bashfully, the expedients of the 
artists to quiet their effects. So the lines of the seven windows are 
built up, to avoid the horizontal, and yet not exaggerate the vertical. 



THE COURT OF THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN 195 

The architect counts here for more than the colourlst ; but the colour, 
when you study it, suggests the same restraint. Three great windows 
on the Virgin's right, balanced by three more on her left, show the 
prophets and precursors of her Son; all architecturally support and 
exalt the Virgin, in her celestial atmosphere of blue, shot with red, 
calm in the certainty of heaven. Any one who is prematurely curious 
to see the difference in treatment between different centuries should 
go down to the church of Saint Pierre in the lower town, and study 
there the methods of the Renaissance. Then we can come back to 
study again the ways of the thirteenth century. The Virgin will wait; 
she will not be angry; she knows her power; we all come back to her 
in the end. 

Or the Renaissance, if one prefers, can wait equally well, while one 
kneels with the thirteenth century, and feels the little one still can feel 
of what it felt. Technically these apsidal windows have not received 
much notice; the books rarely speak of them; travellers seldom look 
at them; and their height is such that even with the best glass, the 
quality of the work is beyond our power to judge. We see, and the 
artists meant that we should see, only the great lines, the colour, and 
the Virgin. The mass of suppliants before the choir look up to the 
light, clear blues and reds of this great space, and feel there the celes- 
tial peace and beauty of Mary's nature and abode. There is heaven! 
and Mary looks down from it, into her church, where she sees us on our 
knees, and knows each one of us by name. There she actually is — 
not in symbol or in fancy, but in person, descending on her errands 
of mercy and listening to each one of us, as her miracles prove, or satis- 
fying our prayers merely by her presence which calms our excitement 
as that of a mother calms her child. She is there as Queen, not merely 
as intercessor, and her power is such that to her the difference between 
us earthly beings is nothing. Her quiet, masculine strength enchants 
us most. Pierre Mauclerc and Philippe Hurepel and their men-at- 
arms are afraid of her, and the Bishop himself is never quite at his ease 



196 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

in her presence; but to peasants, and beggars, and people In trouble, 
this sense of her power and calm is better than active sympathy. 
People who suffer beyond the formulas of expression — who are 
crushed into silence,and beyond pain — want no display of emotion — 
no bleeding heart — no weeping at the foot of the Cross — no hyster- 
ics — no phrases ! They want to see God, and to know that He is watch- 
ing over His own. How many women are there, in this mass of thir- 
teenth century suppliants, who have lost children? Probably nearly 
all, for the death rate is very high in the conditions of mediaeval life. 
There are thousands of such women here, for it is precisely this 
class who come most ; and probably every one of them has looked up 
to Mary in her great window, and has felt actual certainty, as though 
she saw with her own eyes — there, in heaven, while she looked — her 
own lost baby playing with the Christ-Child at the Virgin's knee, as 
much at home as the saints, and much more at home than the kings. 
Before rising from her knees, every one of these women will have bent 
down and kissed the stone pavement in gratitude for Mary's mercy. 
The earth, she says, is a sorry place, and the best of it is bad enough, 
no doubt, even for Queen Blanche and the Duchess Alix who has had to 
leave her children here alone ; but there above is Mary in heaven who 
sees and hears me as I see her, and who keeps my little boy till I come; 
so I can wait with patience, more or less! Saints and prophets and 
martyrs are all very well, and Christ is very sublime and just, but 
Mary knows ! 

It was very childlike, very foolish, very beautiful, and very true, 
— as art, at least : — so true that everything else shades off into vul- 
garity, as you see the Persephone of a Syracusan coin shade off Into 
the vulgarity of a Roman emperor; as though the heaven that lies 
about us in our infancy too quickly takes colours that are not so much 
sober as sordid, and would be welcome If no worse than that. Vul- 
garity, too, has feeling, and Its expression In art has truth and even 
pathos, but we shall have time enough in our lives for that, and all the 



THE COURT OF THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN 197 

more because, when we rise from our knees now, we have finished our 
pilgrimage. We have done with Chartres. For seven hundred years 
Chartres has seen pilgrims, coming and going more or less like us, and 
will perhaps see them for another seven hundred years ; but we shall 
see it no more, and can safely leave the Virgin in her majesty, with her 
three great prophets on either hand, as calm and confident in their 
own strength and in God's providence as they were when Saint Louis 
was born, but looking down from a deserted heaven, into an empty 
church, on a dead faith. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE THREE QUEENS 

AFTER worshipping at the shrines of Saint Michael on his Mount 
and of the Virgin at Chartres, one may wander far and wide over 
France, and seldom feel lost ; all later Gothic art comes naturally, and 
no new thought disturbs the perfected form. Yet tourists of English 
blood and American training are seldom or never quite at home there. 
Commonly they feel it only as a stage-decoration. The twelfth and 
thirteenth centuries, studied in the pure light of political economy, are 
insane. The scientific mind is atrophied, and suffers under inherited 
cerebral weakness, when it comes in contact with the eternal woman 
— Astarte, Isis, Demeter, Aphrodite, and the last and greatest deity 
of all, the Virgin. Very rarely one lingers, with a mild sympathy, such 
as suits the patient student of human error, willing to be interested in 
what he cannot understand. Still more rarely, owing to some revival 
of archaic instincts, he rediscovers the woman. This is perhaps the 
mark of the artist alone, and his solitary privilege. The rest of us 
cannot feel ; we can only study. The proper study of mankind is woman 
and, by common agreement since the time of Adam, it is the most com- 
plex and arduous. The study of Our Lady, as shown by the art of 
Chartres, leads directly back to Eve, and lays bare the whole subject 
of sex. 

If it were worth while to argue a paradox, one might maintain that 
Nature regards the female as the essential, the male as the superflu- 
ity of her world. Perhaps the best starting-point for study of the 
Virgin would be a practical acquaintance with bees, and especially with 
queen bees. Precisely where the French man may come in, on the 
genealogical tree of parthenogenesis, one hesitates to say; but certain 



THE THREE QUEENS 199 

it is that the French woman, from very early times, has shown quaUties 
peculiar to herself, and that the French woman of the Middle Ages was 
a masculine character. Almost any book which deals with the social 
side of the twelfth century has something to say on this subject, like 
the following page from M. Garreau's volume published in 1899, on 
the "Social State of France during the Crusades": — 

A trait peculiar to this epoch is the close resemblance between the manners 
of men and women. The rule that such and such feelings or acts are permitted to 
one sex and forbidden to the other was not fairly settled. Men had the right to 
dissolve in tears, and women that of talking without prudery. ... If we look 
at their intellectual level, the women appear distinctly superior. They are more 
serious; more subtle. With them we do not seem dealing with the rude state of 
civilization that their husbands belong to. ... As a rule, the women seem to 
have the habit of weighing their acts ; of not yielding to momentary impressions. 
While the sense of Christianity is more developed in them than in their husbands, 
on the other hand they show more perfidy and art in crime. . . . One might doubt- 
less prove by a series of examples that the maternal influence when it predominated 
in the education of a son gave him a marked superiority over his contemporaries. 
Richard Coeur-de-Lion the crowned poet, artist, the king whose noble manners and 
refined mind in spite of his cruelty exercised so strong an impression on his age, 
was formed by that brilliant Eleanor of Guienne who, in her struggle with her 
husband, retained her sons as much as possible within her sphere of influence in 
order to make party chiefs of them. Our great Saint Louis, as all know, was brought 
up exclusively by Blanche of Castile; and Joinville, the charming writer so worthy 
of Saint Louis's friendship, and apparently so superior to his surroundings, was 
also the pupil of a widowed and regent mother. 

The superiority of the woman was not a fancy, but a fact. Man's 
business was to fight or hunt or feast or make love. The man was 
also the travelling partner in commerce, commonly absent from home 
for months together, while the woman carried on the business. The 
woman ruled the household and the workshop; cared for the economy; 
supplied the intelligence, and dictated the taste. Her ascendancy was 
secured by her alliance with the Church, into which she sent her most 
intelligent children ; and a priest or clerk, for the most part, counted 
socially as a woman. Both physically and mentally the woman was 
robust, as the men often complained, and she did not greatly resent 



200 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

being treated as a man. Sometimes the husband beat her, dragged her 
about by the hair, locked her up in the house; but he was quite con- 
scious that she always got even with him in the end. As a matter of 
fact, probably she got more than even. On this point, history, legend, 
poetry, romance, and especially the popular fabliaux — invented to 
amuse the gross tastes of the coarser class — are all agreed, and one 
could give scores of volumes illustrating it. The greatest men illustrate 
it best, as one might show almost at hazard. The greatest men of the 
eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries were William the Norman; 
his great grandson Henry II Plantagenet; Saint Louis of France; 
and, if a fourth be needed, Richard Coeur-de-Lion. Notoriously all 
these men had as much difficulty as Louis XIV himself with the 
women of their family. Tradition exaggerates everything it touches, 
but shows, at the same time, what is passing in the minds of the so- 
ciety which tradites. In Normandy, the people of Caen have kept a 
tradition, told elsewhere in other forms, that one day, Duke William, 
— the Conqueror, — exasperated by having his bastardy constantly 
thrown in his face by the Duchess Matilda, dragged her by the hair, 
tied to his horse's tail, as far as the suburb of Vaucelles; and this 
legend accounts for the splendour of the Abbaye-aux-Dames, because 
William, the common people believed, afterwards regretted the im- 
propriety, and atoned for it by giving her money to build the abbey. 
The story betrays the man's weakness. The Abbaye-aux-Dames 
stands in the same relation to the Abbaye-aux-Hommes that Matilda 
took towards William. Inferiority there was none; on the contrary, 
the woman was socially the superior, and William was probably more 
afraid of her than she of him, if Mr. Freeman is right in insisting that 
he married her in spite of her having a husband living, and certainly 
two children. If William was the strongest man in the eleventh cen- 
tury, his great-grandson, Henry II of England, was the strongest man 
of the twelfth ; but the history of the time resounds with the noise of 
his battles with Queen Eleanor whom he, at last, held in prison for 



THE THREE QUEENS 201 

fourteen years. Prisoner as she was, she broke him down in the end. 
One is tempted to suspect that, had her husband and children been 
guided by her, and by her policy as peacemaker for the good of Guienne, 
most of the disasters of England and France might have been post- 
poned for the time; but we can never know the truth, for monks and 
historians abhor emancipated women, — with good reason, since such 
women are apt to abhor them, — and the quarrel can never be paci- 
fied. Historians have commonly shown fear of women without admit- 
ting it, but the man of the Middle Ages knew at least why he feared 
the woman, and told it openly, not to say brutally. Long after Eleanor 
and Blanche were dead, Chaucer brought the Wife of Bath on his 
Shakespearean stage, to explain the woman, and as usual he touched 
masculine frailty with caustic, while seeming to laugh at woman and 
man alike : — 

"My liege lady! generally," quoth he, 
"Women desiren to have soverainetee." 

The point was that the Wife of Bath, like Queen Blanche and Queen 
Eleanor, not only wanted sovereignty, but won and held it. 

That Saint Louis, even when a grown man and king, stood in awe 
of his mother, Blanche of Castile, was not only notorious but seemed 
to be thought natural. Joinville recorded it not so much to mark the 
King's weakness, as the woman's strength; for his Queen, Margaret 
of Provence, showed the courage which the King had not. Blanche and 
Margaret were exceedingly jealous of each other. "One day," said 
Joinville, "Queen Blanche went to the Queen's [Margaret] chamber 
where her son [Louis IX] had gone before to comfort her, for she was in 
great danger of death from a bad delivery; and he hid himself behind 
the Queen [Margaret] to avoid being seen ; but his mother perceived 
him, and taking him by the hand said: 'Come along! you will do 
no good here ! ' and put him out of the chamber. Queen Margaret, ob- 
serving this, and that she was to be separated from her husband, cried 
aloud: 'Alas! will you not allow me to see my lord either living or 



202 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

dying? ' " According to Joinville, King Louis always hid himself when, 
in his wife's chamber, he heard his mother coming. 

The great period of Gothic architecture begins with the coming of 
Eleanor (i 137) and ends with the passing of Blanche (1252). Eleanor's 
long life was full of energy and passion of which next to nothing is 
known; the woman was always too slippery for monks or soldiers to 
grasp. 

Eleanor came to Paris, a Queen of fifteen years old, in 1 137, bringing 
Poitiers and Guienne as the greatest dowry ever offered to the French 
Crown. She brought also the tastes and manners of the South, little 
in harmony with the tastes and manners of Saint Bernard whose au- 
thority at court rivalled her own. The Abbe Suger supported her, but 
the King leaned toward the Abbe Bernard. What this puritan reaction 
meant is a matter to be studied by itself, if one can find a cloister to 
study in ; but it bore the mark of most puritan reactions in its hostility 
to women. As long as the woman remained docile, she ruled, through 
the Church; but the man feared her and was jealous of her, and she of 
him. Bernard specially adored the Virgin because she was an example 
of docile obedience to the Trinity who atoned for the indocility of 
Eve, but Eve herself remained the instrument of Satan, and French 
society as a whole showed a taste for Eves. 

Eleanor could hardly be called docile. Whatever else she loved, 
she certainly loved rule. She shared this passion to the full with her 
only great successor and rival on the English throne. Queen Elizabeth, 
and she happened to become Queen of France at the moment when 
society was turning from worship of its military ideal. Saint Michael, 
to worship of its social ideal, the Virgin. According to the monk 
Orderic, men had begun to throw aside their old military dress and 
manners even before the first crusade, in the days of William Rufus 
(1087-1100), and to affect feminine fashions. In all ages, priests and 
monks have denounced the growing vices in society, with more or less 
reason; but there seems to have been a real outbreak of display at 



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204 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

about the time of the first crusade, which set a deep mark on every sort 

of social expression, even down to the shoes of the statues on the western 

portal of Chartres : — 

A debauched fellow named Robert [said Orderic] was the first, about the time 
of William Rufus, who introduced the practice of filling the long points of the 
shoes with tow, and of turning them up like a ram's horn. Hence he got the sur- 
name of Cornard ; and this absurd fashion was speedily adopted by great numbers 
of the nobility as a proud distinction and sign of merit. At this time effeminacy 
was the prevailing vice throughout the world. . . . They parted their hair from 
the crown of the head on each side of the forehead, and their locks grew long like 
women, and wore long shirts and tunics, closely tied with points. ... In our days, 
ancient customs are almost all changed for new fashions. Our wanton youths 
are sunk in effeminacy. . . . They insert their toes in things like serpents' tails 
which present to view the shape of scorpions. Sweeping the dusty ground with 
the prodigious trains of their robes and mantles, they cover their hands with 
gloves . . . 

If you are curious to follow these monkish criticisms on your an- 
cestors' habits, you can read Orderic at your leisure ; but you want only 
to carry in mind the fact that the generation of warriors who fought 
at Hastings and captured Jerusalem were regarded by themselves as 
effeminate, and plunged in luxury. "Their locks are curled with hot 
irons, and instead of wearing caps, they bind their heads with fillets. 
A knight seldom appears in public with his head uncovered and properly 
shaved according to the apostolic precept." The effeminacy of the first 
crusade took artistic shape in the west portal of Chartres and the glass 
of Saint-Denis, and led instantly to the puritan reaction of Saint 
Bernard, followed by the gentle asceticism of Queen Blanche and Saint 
Louis. Whether the pilgrimages to Jerusalem and contact with the 
East were the cause or only a consequence of this revolution, or 
whether it was all one, — a result of converting the Northern pagans 
to peaceful habits and the consequent enrichment of northern Europe, 
— is indifferent; the fact and the date are enough. The art is French, 
but the ideas may have come from anywhere, like the game of chess 
which the pilgrims or crusaders brought home from Syria. In the 
Oriental game, the King was followed step by step by a Minister 



THE THREE QUEENS 205 

whose functions were personal. The crusaders freed the piece from 
control; gave it liberty to move up or down or diagonally, forwards 
and backwards ; made it the most arbitrary and formidable champion 
on the board, while the King and the Knight were the most restricted in 
movement; and this piece they named Queen, and called the Virgin: — 

Li Baudrains traist sa fierge por son paon sauver, 
E cele son aufin qui cuida conquester 
La firge ou le paon, ou f aire reculer. 

The aufin or dauphin became the Fou of the French game, and the 
bishop of the English. Baldwin played his Virgin to save his pawn; 
his opponent played the bishop to threaten either the Virgin or the 
pawn. 

For a hundred and fifty years, the Virgin and Queens ruled French 
taste and thought so successfully that the French man has never yet 
quite decided whether to be more proud or ashamed of it. Life has 
ever since seemed a little flat to him, and art a little cheap. He saw 
that the woman, in elevating herself, had made him appear ridiculous, 
and he tried to retaliate with a wit not always sparkling, and too 
often at his own expense. Sometimes in museums or collections of 
bric-^-brac, you will see, in an illuminated manuscript, or carved on 
stone, or cast in bronze, the figure of a man on his hands and knees, 
bestridden by another figure holding a bridle and a whip ; it is Aris- 
totle, symbol of masculine wisdom, bridled and driven by woman. 
Six hundred years afterwards, Tennyson revived the same motive in 
Merlin, enslaved not for a time but forever. In both cases the satire 
justly punished the man. Another version of the same story — per- 
haps the original — was the Mystery of Adam, one of the earliest 
Church plays. Gaston Paris says "it was written in England in the 
twelfth century, and its author had real poetic talent; the scene of 
the seduction of Eve by the serpent is one of the best pieces of Christian 
dramaturgy. . . . This remarkable work seems to have been played no 
longer inside the church, but under the porch " : — 



206 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



Diabolus. Jo vi Adam mais trop est fols. 

Eva. Un poi est durs. 

Diabolus. II serra mols. 

II est plus durs qui n'est enfers. 

Eva. II est mult francs. 

Diabolus. Ainz est mult sers. 

Cure ne volt prendre de sei 
Car la prenge sevals de tei. 
Tu es fieblette et tendre chose 
E es plus fresche que n'est rose. 
Tu es plus blanche que cristal 
Que neif que chiet sor glace en val. 
Mai cuple en fist li Criatur. 
Tu es trop tendre e il trop dur. 
Mais neporquant tu es plus sage 
En grant sens as mis tun corrage 
Por CO fait bon traire a tei. 
Parler te voil. 

Eva. Ore ja fai. 



Devil. Adam I 've seen, but he 's too rough. 

Eve. A little hard! 

Devil. He'll soon be soft enough! 

Harder than hell he is till now. 
Eve. He's very frank! » 

Devil. Say very low! 

To help himself he does not care; 

The helping you shall be my share; 

For you are tender, gentle, true, 

The rose is not so fresh as you ; 

Whiter than crystal, or than snow 

That falls from heaven on ice below. 

A sorry mixture God has brewed, 

You too tender, he too rude. 

But you have much the greater sense. 

Your will is all intelligence. 

Therefore it is I turn to you. 

I want to tell you — 
Eve. Do it now! 



The woman's greater intelligence was to blame for Adam's fall. 

Eve was justly punished because she should have known better, while 

Adam, as the Devil truly said, was a dull animal, hardly worth the 

trouble of deceiving. Adam was disloyal, too, untrue to his wife after 

being untrue to his Creator : — 

La femme que tu me donas 
Ele fist prime icest trespas 
Donat le mei e jo mangai. 
Or mest vis tornez est a gwai 
Mai acontai icest manger. 
Jo ai mesfait par ma moiller. 



The woman that you made me take 
First led me into this mistake. 
She gave me the apple that I ate 
And brought me to this evil state. 
Badly for me it turned, I own, 
But all the fault is hers alone. 



The audience accepted this as natural and proper. They recognized 
the man as, of course, stupid, cowardly, and traitorous. The men of 
the baser sort revenged themselves by boorishness that passed with 
them for wit in the taverns of Arras, but the poets of the higher class 
commonly took sides with the women. Even Chaucer, who lived after 
the glamour had faded, and who satirized women to satiety, told their 
tale in his "Legend of Good Women," with evident sympathy. To him, 
also, the ordinary man was inferior, — stupid, brutal, and untrue. 
"Full brittle is the truest," he said: — 



THE THREE QUEENS ^ 207 

For well I wote that Christ himself telleth 
That in Israel, as wide as is the lond, 
That so great faith in all the lond he ne fond 
As in a woman, and this is no lie; 
And as for men, look ye, such tyrannic 
They doen all day, assay hem who so list. 
The truest is full brotell for to trist. 

Neither brutality nor wit helped the man much. Even Bluebeard 
in the end fell a victim to the superior qualities of his last wife, and 
Scheherazade's wit alone has preserved the memory of her royal 
husband. The tradition of thirteenth-century society still rules the 
French stage. The struggle between two strong-willed women to con- 
trol one weak-willed man is the usual motive of the French drama 
in the nineteenth century, as it was the whole motive of Parte- 
nopeus of Blois, one of the best twelfth-century romans; and Join- 
ville described it, in the middle of the thirteenth, as the leading motive 
in the court of Saint Louis, with Queen Blanche and Queen Margaret 
for players, and Saint Louis himself for pawn. 

One has only to look at the common, so-called Elzevirian, volume 
of thirteenth-century nouvelles to see the Frenchman as he saw him- 
self. The story of "La Comtesse de Ponthieu" is the more Shake- 
spearean, but "La Belle Jehanne " is the more natural and lifelike. The 
plot is the common masculine intrigue against the woman, which was 
used over and over again before Shakespeare appropriated itin " Much 
Ado " ; but its French development is rather in the line of "All 's Well." 
The fair Jeanne, married to a penniless knight, not at all by her 
choice, but only because he was a favourite of her father's, was a 
woman of the true twelfth-century type. She broke the head of the 
traitor, and when he, with his masculine falseness, caused her husband 
to desert her, she disguised herself as a squire and followed Sir Robert 
to Marseilles in search of service in war, for the poor knight could get 
no other means of livelihood. Robert was the husband, and the wife, 
in entering his service as squire without pay, called herself John : — 



208 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



Molt fu mesire Robiers dolans cant il vint 
a Marselle de cou k'il n'oi parler de nulle chose 
ki fust ou pais; si dist a Jehan: 

— Ke ferons nous? Vous m'aves preste de 
vos deniers la vostre mierchi; si les vos ren- 
derai car je venderai men palefroi at m'acui- 
terai a vous. 

— Sire, dist Jehans, crees moi se il vous 
plaist je vous dirai ke nous ferons; jou ai 
bien enchore .c. sous de tournois; s'il vous 
plaist je venderai nos .ii. chevaus et en ferai 
deniers; et je suis li miousdres boulengiers 
ke vous sacies; si ferai pain frangois et je ne 
douc mie ke je ne gaagne bien et largement 
mon depens. 

— Jehans, dist mesire Robiers, je m'otroi 
del tout a faire votre volente. 

Et lendemain vendi Jehans ses .ii. chevaux 
.X. livres de tornois, et achata son ble et le fist 
muire, et achata des corbelles et coumencha a 
faire pain frangois si bon et si bien fait k'il 
en vendoit plus ke li doi melleur boulengier 
de la ville; et fist tant dedens les .ii. ans 
k'il ot bien .c. livres de katel. Lors dist Jehans 
a son segnour: 

— Je lo bien que nous louons une tres grant 
mason et jou akaterai del vin et hierbegerai 
la bonne gent. 

— Jehan, dist mesire Robiers, faites a vo 
volente kar je I'otroi et si me loc molt de vous. 

Jehans loua une mason grant et bielle, et si 
hierbrega la bonne gent et gaegnoit ases a 
plente, et viestoit son segnour biellement 
et richement; et avoit mesire Robiers son pale- 
froi et aloit boire et mengier aveukes les plus 
vallans de la ville; et Jehans li envoioit vins 
et viandes ke tout cil ki o lui conpagnoient 
s'en esmervelloient. Si gaegna tant ke dedens 
.iiii. ans il gaegna plus de .ccc. livres de meuble 
sains son harnois qui valoit bien .L. livres. 



Much was Sir Robert grieved when he came 
to Marseilles and found that there was no 
talk of anything doing in the country; and 
he said to John: "What shall we do? You have 
lent me your money; I thank you, and will 
repay you, for I will sell my palfrey and dis- 
charge the debt to you." 

"Sir," said John, "trust to me, if you 
please, I will tell you what we will do ; I have 
still a hundred sous; if you please I will sell 
our two horses and turn them into money; 
and I am the best baker you ever knew; I will 
make French bread, and I 've no doubt I shall 
pay my expenses well and make money." 

"John," said Sir Robert, "I agree wholly 
to do whatever you like." 

And the next day John sold their two horses 
for ten pounds, and bought his wheat and had 
it ground, and bought baskets, and began to 
make French bread so good and so well made 
that he sold more of it than the two best 
bakers in the city; and made so much within 
two years that he had a good hundred pounds 
property. Then he said to his lord: "I advise 
our hiring a very large house, and I will buy 
wine and will keep lodgings for good society." 

"John," said Sir Robert, "do what you 
please, for I grant it, and am greatly pleased 
with you." 

John hired a large and fine house and 
lodged the best people and gained a great 
plenty, and dressed his master handsomely 
and richly; and Sir Robert kept his palfrey 
and went out to eat and drink with the best 
people of the city; and John sent them such 
wines and food that all his companions mar- 
velled at it. He made so much that within 
four years he gained more than three hundred 
pounds in money besides clothes, etc., well 
worth fifty. 



The docile obedience of the man to the woman seemed as reason- 
able to the thirteenth century as the devotion of the woman to the 
man, not because she loved him, for there was no question of love, but 
because he was her man, and she owned him as though he were her 



THE THREE QUEENS 209 

child. The tale went on to develop her character always in the same 
sense. When she was ready, Jeanne broke up the establishment at 
Marseilles, brought her husband back to Hainault, and made him, 
without knowing her object, kill the traitor and redress her wrongs. 
Then after seven years' patient waiting, she revealed herself and re- 
sumed her place. 

If you care to see the same type developed to its highest capacity, 
go to the theatre the first time some ambitious actress attempts the 
part of Lady Macbeth. Shakespeare realized the thirteenth-century 
woman more vividly than the thirteenth-century poets ever did ; but 
that is no new thing to say of Shakespeare. The author of " La Com- 
tesse de Ponthieu" made no bad sketch of the character. These are 
fictions, but the Chronicles contain the names of women by scores who 
were the originals of the sketch. The society which Orderic described 
in Normandy — the generation of the first crusade — produced a 
great variety of Lady Macbeths. In the country of Evreux, about 
1 100, Orderic says that ''a worse than civil war was waged between two 
powerful brothers, and the mischief was fomented by the spiteful 
jealousy of their haughty wives. The Countess Havise of Evreux took 
offence at some taunts uttered by Isabel de Conches, — wife of Ralph, 
the Seigneur of Conches, some ten miles from Evreux, — and used all 
her influence with her husband. Count William, and his barons, to 
make trouble. . . . Both the ladies who stirred up these fierce enmities 
were great talkers and spirited as well as handsome; they ruled their 
husbands, oppressed their vassals, and inspired terror in various 
ways. But still their characters were very different. Havise had wit 
and eloquence, but she was cruel and avaricious. Isabel was generous, 
enterprising, and gay, so that she was beloved and esteemed by those 
about her. She rode in knight's armour when her vassals were called 
to war, and showed as much daring among men-at-arms and mounted 
knights as Camilla. ..." More than three hundred years afterwards, 
far off in the Vosges, from a village never heard of, appeared a com- 



210 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

mon peasant of seventeen years old, a girl without birth, education, 
wealth, or claim of any sort to consideration, who made her way to 
Chinon and claimed from Charles VII a commission to lead his army 
against the English. Neither the king nor the court had faith in her, 
and yet the commission was given, and the rank-and-file showed again 
that the true Frenchman had more confidence in the woman than in 
the man, no matter what the gossips might say. No one was surprised 
when Jeanne did what she promised, or when the men burned her 
for doing it. There were Jeannes in every village. Ridicule was power- 
less against them. Even Voltaire became what the French call frankly 
"b^te," in trying it. 

Eleanor of Guienne was the greatest of all Frenchwomen. Her 
decision was law, whether in Bordeaux or Poitiers, in Paris or in Pales- 
tine, in London or in Normandy; in the court of Louis VII, or in that 
of Henry II, or in her own Court of Love. For fifteen years she was 
Queen of France ; for fifty she was Queen in England ; for eighty or 
thereabouts she was equivalent to Queen over Guienne. No other 
Frenchwoman ever had such rule. Unfortunately, as Queen of France, 
she struck against an authority greater than her own, that of Saint Ber- 
nard, and after combating it, with Suger's help, from 1 137 until 1 152, 
the monk at last gained such mastery that Eleanor quitted the coun- 
try and Suger died. She was not a person to accept defeat. She royally 
divorced her husband and went back to her own kingdom of Guienne. 
Neither Louis nor Bernard dared to stop her, or to hold her territories 
from her, but they put the best face they could on their defeat by pro- 
claiming her as a person of irregular conduct. The irregularity would 
not have stood in their way, if they had dared to stand in hers, but 
Louis was much the weaker, and made himself weaker still by allowing 
her to leave him for the sake of Henry of Anjou, a story of a sort that 
rarely raised the respect in which French kings were held by French 
society. Probably politics had more to do with the matter than per- 
sonal attachments, for Eleanor was a great ruler, the equal of any 



THE THREE QUEENS 211 

ordinary king, and more powerful than most kings living in 11 52. If 
she deserted France in order to join the enemies of France, she had seri- 
ous reasons besides love for young Henry of Anjou ; but in any case she 
did, as usual, what pleased her, and forced Louis to pronounce the di- 
vorce at a council held at Beaugency, March 18, 1 152, on the usual pre- 
text of relationship. The humours of the twelfth century were Shake- 
spearean. Eleanor, having obtained her divorce at Beaugency, to the 
deep regret of all Frenchmen, started at once for Poitiers, knowing how 
unsafe she was in any territory but her own. Beaugency is on the 
Loire, between Orleans and Blois, and Eleanor's first night was at 
Blois, or should have been; but she was told, on arriving, that Count 
Thibaut of Blois, undeterred by King Louis's experience, was making 
plans to detain her, with perfectly honourable views of marriage; and, 
as she seems at least not to have been in love with Thibaut, she was 
obliged to depart at once, in the night, to Tours. A night journey on 
horseback from Blois to Tours in the middle of March can have been 
no pleasure-trip, even in 1 1 52 ; but, on arriving at Tours in the morning, 
Eleanor found that her lovers were still so dangerously near that she 
set forward at once on the road to Poitiers. As she approached her 
own territory she learned that Geoffrey of Anjou, the younger brother 
of her intended husband, was waiting for her at the border, with views 
of marriage as strictly honourable as those of all the others. She was 
driven to take another road, and at last got safe to Poitiers. 

About no figure in the Middle Ages, man or woman, did so many 
legends grow, and with such freedom, as about Eleanor, whose strength 
appealed to French sympathies and whose adventures appealed to 
their imagination. They never forgave Louis for letting her go. They 
delighted to be told that in Palestine she had carried on relations 
of the most improper character, now with a Saracen slave of great 
beauty; now with Raymond of Poitiers, her uncle, the handsomest 
man of his time; now with Saladin himself; and, as all this occurred 
at Antioch in 1147 or 1148, they could not explain why her husband 



212 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

should have waited until 1 152 in order to express his unwilling disap- 
proval ; but they quoted with evident sympathy a remark attributed 
to her that she thought she had married a king, and found she had mar- 
ried a monk. To the Frenchman, Eleanor remained always sympa- 
thetic, which is the more significant because, in English tradition, her 
character suffered a violent and incredible change. Although English 
history has lavished on Eleanor somewhat more than her due share of 
conventional moral reproof, considering that, from the moment she 
married Henry of Anjou, May 18, 1 152, she was never charged with a 
breath of scandal, it atoned for her want of wickedness by French 
standards, in the usual manner of historians, by inventing traits which 
reflected the moral standards of England. Tradition converted her into 
the fairy-book type of feminine jealousy and invented for her the 
legend of the Fair Rosamund and the poison of toads. 

For us, both legends are true. They reflected, not perhaps the 
character of Eleanor, but what the society liked to see acted on its 
theatre of life. Eleanor's real nature in no way concerns us. The 
single fact worth remembering was that she had two daughters by 
Louis VII, as shown in the table; who, in due time, married — Mary, 
in 1 164, married Henry, the great Count of Champagne; Alix, at the 
same time, became Countess of Chartres by marriage with Thibaut, 
who had driven her mother from Blois in 1 152 by his marital intentions. 
Henry and Thibaut were brothers whose sister Alix had married 
Louis VII in 1160, eight years after the divorce. The relations thus 
created were fantastic, especially for Queen Eleanor, who, besides her 
two French daughters, had eight children as Queen of England. Her 
second son, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, born in 1157, was affianced in 
1 1 74 to a daughter of Louis VII and Alix, a child only six years old, 
who was sent to England to be brought up as future queen. This was 
certainly Eleanor's doing, and equally certain was it that the child came 
to no good in the English court. The historians, by exception, have 
not charged this crime to Queen Eleanor; they charged it to Eleanor's 



THE THREE QUEENS 213 

husband, who passed most of his Hfe in crossing his wife's poUtical 
plans; but with poHtics we want as little as possible to do. We are 
concerned with the artistic and social side of life, and have only to 
notice the coincidence that while the Virgin was miraculously using 
the power of spiritual love to elevate and purify the people, Eleanor and 
her daughters were using the power of earthly love to discipline and 
refine the courts. Side by side with the crude realities about them, 
they insisted on teaching and enforcing an ideal that contradicted 
the realities, and had no value for them or for us except in the con- 
tradiction. 

The ideals of Eleanor and her daughter Mary of Champagne were 
a form of religion, and if you care to see its evangels, you had best 
go directly to Dante and Petrarch, or, if you like it better, to Don 
Quixote de la Mancha. The religion is dead as Demeter, and its art 
alone survives as, on the whole, the highest expression of man's thought 
or emotion ; but in its day it was almost as practical as it now is fanci- 
ful. Eleanor and her daughter Mary and her granddaughter Blanche 
knew as well as Saint Bernard did, or Saint Francis, what a brute the 
emancipated man could be; and as though they foresaw the society 
of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, they used every terror they 
could invent, as well as every tenderness they could invoke, to tame 
the beasts around them. Their charge was of manners, and, to teach 
manners, they made a school which they called their Court of Love, 
with a code of law to which they gave the name of "courteous love." 
The decisions of this court were recorded, like the decisions of a mod- 
ern bench, under the names of the great ladies who made them, and 
were enforced by the ladies of good society for whose guidance they 
were made. They are worth reading, and any one who likes may read 
them to this day, with considerable scepticism about their genuineness. 
The doubt is only ignorance. We do not, and never can, know the 
twelfth-century woman, or, for that matter, any other woman, but we 
do know the literature she created; we know the art she lived in, and 



214 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

the religion she professed. We can collect from them some idea why 
the Virgin Mary ruled, and what she was taken to be, by the world 
which worshipped her. 

Mary of Champagne created the literature of courteous love. She 
must have been about twenty years old when she married Count 
Henry and went to live at Troyes, not actually a queen in title, but 
certainly a queen in social influence. In 1 164, Champagne was a power- 
ful country, and Troyes a centre of taste. In Normandy, at the same 
date, William of Saint Pair and Wace were writing the poetry we 
know. In Champagne the court poet was Christian of Troyes, whose 
poems were new when the churches of Noyon and Senlis and Saint 
Leu d'Esserent, and the fleche of Chartres, and the Leaning Tower 
of Pisa, were building, at the same time with the Abbey of Vezelay, and 
before the church at Mantes. Christian died not long after 1 175, leav- 
ing a great mass of verse, much of which has survived, and which 
you can read more easily than you can read Dante or Petrarch, al- 
though both are almost modern compared with Christian. The qual- 
ity of this verse is something like the quality of the glass windows — 
conventional decoration; colours in conventional harmonies; refine- 
ment, restraint, and feminine delicacy of taste. Christian has not the 
grand manner of the eleventh century, and never recalls the masculine 
strength of the "Chanson de Roland" or"Raoul de Cambrai." Even 
his most charming story, "Erec et Enide," carries chiefly a moral of 
courtesy. His is poet-laureate's work, says M. Gaston Paris; the 
flower of a twelfth-century court and of twelfth-century French ; the 
best example of an admirable language ; but not lyric ; neither strong, 
nor deep, nor deeply felt. What we call tragedy is unknown to it. 
Christian's world is sky-blue and rose, with only enough red to give it 
warmth, and so flooded with light that even its mysteries count only 
by the clearness with which they are shown. 

Among other great works, before Mary of France came to Troyes, 
Christian had, toward 1 160, written a "Tristan," which is lost. Mary 



THE THREE QUEENS 215 

herself, he says, gave him the subject of "Lancelot," with the request 
or order to make it a lesson of "courteous love," which he obeyed. 
Courtesy has lost its meaning as well as its charm, and you might find 
the " Chevalier de la Charette" even more unintelligible than tiresome; 
but its influence was great in its day, and the lesson of courteous love, 
under the authority of Mary of Champagne, lasted for centuries as 
the standard of taste. "Lancelot" was never finished, but later, not 
long after 11 74, Christian wrote a "Perceval," or "Conte du Graal," 
which must also have been intended to please Mary, and which is in- 
teresting because, while the "Lancelot" gave the twelfth-century idea 
of courteous love, the "Perceval" gave the twelfth-century idea of 
religious mystery. Mary was certainly concerned with both. "It is 
for this same Mary," says Gaston Paris, " that Walter of Arras under- 
took his poem of 'Eracle'; she was the object of the songs of the 
troubadours as well as of their French imitators ; for her use also she 
caused the translations of books of piety like Genesis, or the paraphrase 
at great length, in verse, of the psalm 'Eructavit.'" 

With her theories of courteous love, every one is more or less famil- 
iar if only from the ridicule of Cervantes and the follies of Quixote, 
who, though four hundred years younger, was Lancelot's child ; but we 
never can know how far she took herself and her laws of love seriously, 
and to speculate on so deep a subject as her seriousness is worse than 
useless, since she would herself have been as uncertain as her lovers 
were. Visionary as the courtesy was, the Holy Grail was as practical 
as any bric-a-brac that has survived of the time. The mystery of 
Perceval is like that of the Gothic cathedral, illuminated by floods of 
light, and enlivened by rivers of colour. Unfortunately Christian never 
told what he meant by the fragment, itself a mystery, in which he 
narrated the story of the knight who saw the Holy Grail, because the 
knight, who was warned, as usual, to ask no questions, for once, unlike 
most knights, obeyed the warning when he should have disregarded it. 
As knights-errant necessarily did the wrong thing in order to make 



2l6 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



their adventures possible, Perceval's error cannot be in itself mysterious, 
nor was the castle in any way mysterious where the miracle occurred. 
It appeared to him to be the usual castle, and he saw nothing unusual 
in the manner of his reception by the usual old lord, or in the fact 
that both seated themselves quite simply before the hall-fire with 
the usual household. Then, as though it were an everyday habit, the 
Holy Grail was brought in (Bartsch, "Chrestomathie," 183-85, ed. 
1895): — 



Et leans avait luminaire 

Si grant con Fan le porrait faire 

De chandoiles a un ostel. 

Que qu'il parloient d'un et d'el, 

Uns vallez d'une chambre vint 

Qui une blanche lance tint 

Ampoigniee par le mi lieu. 

Si passa par endroit le feu 

Et cil qxxi al feu se seoient, 

Et tuit cil de leans veoient 

La lance blanche et le fer blanc. 

S'issoit une gote de sang 

Del fer de la lance au sommet, 

Et jusqu'a la main au vaslet 

Coroit cele gote vermoille. . • • , 

A tant dui autre vaslet vindrent 

Qui chandeliers an lors mains tindrent 

De fin or ovrez a neel. 

Li vaslet estoient moult bel 

Qui les chandeliers aportoient. 

An chacun chandelier ardoient 

Dous chandoiles a tot le mains. 

Un graal autre ses dous mains 

Une demoiselle tenoit, 

Qui avec les vaslets venoit, 

Bele et gente et bien acesmee. 

Quant ele fu leans antree 

Atot le graal qu'ele tint 

Une si granz clartez i vint 

Qu'ausi perdirent les chandoiles 

Lor clarte come les estoiles 

Qant li solauz luist et la lune. 

Apres cell an revint une 

Qui tint un tailleor d 'argent. 



And, within, the hall was bright 
As any hall could be with light 
Of candles in a house at night. 
So, while of this and that they talked, 
A squire from a chamber walked. 
Bearing a white lance in his hand. 
Grasped by the middle, hke a wand; 
And, as he passed the chimney wide, 
Those seated by the fireside. 
And all the others, caught a glance 
Of the white steel and the white lance. 
As they looked, a drop of blood 
Down the lance's handle flowed; 
Down to where the youth's hand stood. 
From the lance-head at the top 
They saw run that crimson drop. . . . 
Presently came two more squires. 
In their hands two chandeliers. 
Of fine gold in enamel wrought. 
Each squire that the candle brought 
Was a handsome chevalier. 
There burned in every chandelier 
Two lighted candles at the least. 
A damsel, graceful and well dressed, 
Behind the squires followed fast 
Who carried in her hands a graal; 
And as she came within the hall 
With the graal there came a light 
So brilliant that the candles all 
Lost clearness, as the stars at night 
When moon shines, or in day the sun. 

After her there followed one 
Who a dish of silver bore. 



THE THREE QUEENS 



217 



Le graal qui aloit devant 

De fin or esmere estoit, 

Pierres precieuses avoit 

El graal de maintes menieres 

Des plus riches et des plus chieres 

Qui en mer ne en terre soient. 

Totes autres pierres passoient 

Celes del graal sanz dotance. 

Tot ainsi con passa la lance 

Par devant le lit trespasserent 

Et d'une chambre a I'autre alerent. 

Et li vaslet les vit passer,] 

Ni n'osa mire demander 

Del graal cui I'an an servoit. 



The graal, which had gone before, 
Of gold the finest had been made. 
With precious stones had been inlaid, 
Richest and rarest of each kind 
That man in sea or earth could find. 
All other jewels far surpassed 
Those which the holy graal enchased. 

Just as before had passed the lance 
They all before the bed advance. 
Passing straightway through the hall, 
And the knight who saw them pass 
Never ventured once to ask 
For the meaning of the graal. 



The simplicity of this narration gives a certain dramatic effect to 
the mystery, like seeing a ghost in full daylight, but Christian carried 
simplicity further still. He seemed either to feel, or to want others to 
feel, the reality of the adventure and the miracle, and he followed up 
the appearance of the graal by a solid meal in the style of the twelfth 
century, such as one expects to find in " Ivanhoe" or the "Talisman." 
The knight sat down with his host to the best dinner that the county 
of Champagne afforded, and they ate their haunch of venison with the 
graal in full view. They drank their Champagne wine of various sorts, 
out of gold cups : — 

Vins clers ne raspez ne lor faut 
A copes dorees a boivre; 

they sat before the fire and talked till bedtime, when the squires 
made up the beds in the hall, and brought in supper — dates, figs, 
nutmegs, spices, pomegranates, and at last lectuaries, suspiciously like 
what we call jams; and "alexandrine gingerbread"; after which they 
drank various drinks, with or without spice or honey or pepper; and 
old moret, which is thought to be mulberry wine, but which generally 
went with clairet, a colourless grape-juice, or piment. At least, here 
are the lines, and one may translate them to suit one's self: — 



Et li vaslet aparellierent 
Les lis et le fruit au colchier 



2i8 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

Que il en i ot de moult chier, 
Dates, figues, et nois mugates, 
Girofles et pomes de grenates, 
Et leituaires an la fin, 
Et gingenbret alixandrin. 
Apres ce burent de maint boivre, 
Piment ou n'ot ne miel ne poivre 
Et viez more et cler sirop. 

The twelfth century had the child's love of sweets and spices and 
preserved fruits, and drinks sweetened or spiced, whether they were 
taken for supper or for poetry; the true knight's palate v/as fresh and 
his appetite excellent either for sweets or verses or love; the world was 
young then ; Robin Hoods lived in every forest, and Richard Coeur-de- 
Lion was not yet twenty years old. The pleasant adventures of Robin 
Hood were real, as you can read in the stories of a dozen outlaws, and 
men troubled themselves about pain and death much as healthy bears 
did, in the mountains. Life had miseries enough, but few shadows 
deeper than those of the imaginative lover, or the terrors of ghosts at 
night. Men's imaginations ran riot, but did not keep them awake ; at 
least, neither the preserved fruits nor the mulberry wine nor the clear 
syrup nor the gingerbread nor the Holy Graal kept Perceval awake, but 
he slept the sound and healthy sleep of youth, and when he woke the 
next morning, he felt only a mild surprise to find that his host and 
household had disappeared, leaving him to ride away without farewell, 
breakfast, or Graal. 

Christian wrote about Perceval in 1 174 In the same spirit in which 
the workmen in glass, thirty years later, told the story of Charlemagne. 
One artist worked for Mary of Champagne; the others for Mary of 
Chartres, commonly know as the Virgin; but all did their work in 
good faith, with the first, fresh, easy instinct of colour, light, and line. 
Neither of the two Maries was mystical, in a modern sense; none of 
the artists was oppressed by the burden of doubt; their scepticism was 
as childlike as faith. If one has to make an exception, perhaps the 
passion of love was more serious than that of religion, and gave to 



THE THREE QUEENS 219 

religion the deepest emotion, and the most compHcated one, which 
society knew. Love was certainly a passion; and even more certainly 
it was, as seen in poets like Dante and Petrarch, — in romans like 
"Lancelot" and " Aucassin," — in ideals like the Virgin, — compli- 
cated beyond modern conception. For this reason the loss of Chris- 
tian's "Tristan" makes a terrible gap in art, for Christian's poem 
would have given the first and best idea of what led to courteous love. 
The "Tristan" was written before 11 60, and belonged to the cycle of 
Queen Eleanor of England rather than to that of her daughter Mary of 
Troyes; but the subject was one neither of courtesy nor of France; it 
belonged to an age far behind the eleventh century, or even the tenth, 
or indeed any century within the range of French history; and it was 
as little fitted for Christian's way of treatment as for any avowed 
burlesque. The original Tristan — critics say — was not French, and 
neither Tristan nor Isolde had ever a drop of French blood in their 
veins. In their form as Christian received it, they were Celts or Scots; 
they came from Brittany, Wales, Ireland, the northern ocean, or farther 
still. Behind the Welsh Tristan, which passed probably through Eng- 
land to Normandy and thence to France and Champagne, critics de- 
tect a far more ancient figure living in a form of society that France 
could not remember ever to have known. King Marc was a tribal 
chief of the Stone Age whose subjects loved the forest and lived on the 
sea or in caves ; King Marc's royal hall was a common shelter on the 
banks of a stream, where every one was at home, and king, queen, 
knights, attendants, and dwarf slept on the floor, on beds laid down 
where they pleased ; Tristan's weapons were the bow and stone knife; 
he never saw a horse or a spear; his ideas of loyalty and Isolde's ideas 
of marriage were as vague as Marc's royal authority; and all were 
alike unconscious of law, chivalry, or church. The note they sang was 
more unlike the note of Christian, if possible, than that of Richard 
Wagner; it was the simplest expression of rude and primitive love, 
as one could perhaps find it among North American Indians, though 



220 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

hardly so defiant even there, and certainly in the Icelandic Sagas 
hardly so lawless; but it was a note of real passion, and touched the 
deepest chords of sympathy in the artificial society of the twelfth cen- 
tury, as it did in that of the nineteenth. The task of the French poet 
was to tone it down and give it the fashionable dress, the pointed shoes 
and long sleeves, of the time. "The Frenchman," says Gaston Paris, 
"is specially interested in making his story entertaining for the society 
it is meant for ; he is ' social ' ; that is, of the world ; he smiles at the ad- 
ventures he tells, and delicately lets you see that he is not their dupe ; 
he exerts himself to give to his style a constant elegance, a uniform 
polish, in which a few neatly turned, clever phrases sparkle here and 
there; above all, he wants to please, and thinks of his audience more 
than of his subject." 

In the twelfth century he wanted chiefly to please women, as Orderic 
complained ; Isolde came out of Brittany to meet Eleanor coming up 
from Guienne, and the Virgin from the east; and all united in giving 
law to society. In each case it was the woman, not the man, who gave 
the law; — it was Mary, not the Trinity; Eleanor, not Louis VII; 
Isolde, not Tristan. No doubt, the original Tristan had given the law 
like Roland or Achilles, but the twelfth-century Tristan was a compara- 
tively poor creature. He was in his way a secondary figure in the ro- 
mance, as Louis VII was to Eleanor and Abelard to Heloise. Every 
one knows how, about twenty years before Eleanor came to Paris, the 
poet-professor Abelard, the hero of the Latin Quarter, had sung to 
Heloise those songs which — he tells us — resounded through Europe 
vas widely as his scholastic fame, and probably to more effect for his 
renown. In popular notions Heloise was Isolde, and would in a mo- 
ment have done what Isolde did (Bartsch, 107-08) : — 

Quaint reis Marcs nus out conjeies When King Marc had banned us both, 

E de sa curt nus out chascez, And from his court had chased us forth, 

As mains ensemble nus preismes Hand in hand each clasping fast 

E hors de la sale en eissimes, Straight from out the hall we passed; 

A la forest puis en alasmes To the forest turned our face; 



THE THREE QUEENS 



221 



E un mult bel liu i trouvames 
E une roche, fu cavee, 
Devant ert estraite la entree, 
Dedans fu voesse ben faite, 
Tante bel cum se fust purtraite. 



Found in it a perfect place, 
Where the rock that made a cave 
Hardly more than passage gave; 
Spacious within and fit for use, 
As though it had been planned for us. 



At any time of her life, Heloise would have defied society or church, 
and would — at least in the public's fancy — have taken Abelard by 
the hand and gone off to the forest much more readily than she went 
to the cloister; but Abelard would have made a poor figure as Tristan. 
Abelard and Christian of Troyes were as remote as we are from the 
legendary Tristan ; but Isolde and Heloise, Eleanor and Mary were the 
immortal and eternal woman. The legend of Isolde, both in the earlier 
and the later version, seems to have served as a sacred book to the 
women of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and Christian's Isolde 
surely helped Mary in giving law to the Court of Troyes and decisions 
in the Court of Love. 

Countess Mary's authority lasted from 1164 to 1198, thirty-four 
years, during which, at uncertain intervals, glimpses of her influence 
flash out in poetry rather than in prose. Christian began his " Roman 
de la Charette" by invoking her: — 

Puisque ma dame de Chanpaigne 
Vialt que romans a faire anpraigne 



Si deist et jel tesmoignasse 
Que ce est la dame qui passe 
Totes celes qui sont vivanz 
Si con li funs passe les vanz 
Qui vante en Mai ou en Avril 

Dirai je : tant com une jame 
Vaut de pailes et de sardines 
Vaut la contesse de reines? 



Christian chose curious similes. His dame surpassed all living rivals as 
smoke passes the winds that blow in May; or as much as a gem would 
buy of straws and sardines is the Countess worth in queens. Louis 
XIV would have thought that Christian might be laughing at him, 
but court styles changed with their masters. Louis XIV would scarcely 



222 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



have written a prison-song to his sister such as Richard Coeur-de-Lion 
wrote to Mary of Champagne: — 



Ja nus hons pris ne dirat sa raison 
Adroitement s'ansi com dolans non; 
Mais par confort puet il faire chanson. 

Moult ai d'amins, mais povre sont li don; 

Honte en avront se por ma reangon 
Suix ces deus yvers pris. 

Ceu sevent bien mi home et mi baron, 
Englois, Normant, Poitevin et Gascon, 
Ke je n'avoie si povre compaingnon 

Cui je laissasse por avoir an prixon. 

Je nel di pas por nuUe retraison, 
Mais ancor suix je pris. 

Or sai ge bien de voir certainement 
Ke mors ne pris n'ait amin ne parent, 
Cant on me lait por or ne por argent. 
Movilt m'est de moi, mais plus m'est de ma 

gent 
C'apres ma mort avront reprochier grant 
Se longement suix pris. 

N'est pas mervelle se j'ai lo cuer dolent 
Cant li miens sires tient ma terre en tor- 
ment. 
S'or li menbroit de nostre sairement 
Ke nos feismes andui communament, 
Bien sai de voir ke ceans longement 
Ne seroie pas pris. 

Ce sevent bien Angevin et Torain, 

Cil bacheler ki or sont fort et sain, 
V C'ancombreis suix long d'aus en autrui 

main. 
Forment m'amoient, mais or ne m'aimment 

grain. 
De belles arm'es sont ores veut cil plain, 
Por tant ke je suix pris. 

Mes compaingnons cui j'amoie et cui j'aim, 
Ces dou Caheu et ces dou Percherain, 
Me di, chanson, kil ne sont pas certain, 



No prisoner can tell his honest thought 
Unless he speaks as one who suffers wrong; 
But for his comfort he may make a song. 

My friends are many,but their gifts are naught. 

Shame will be theirs, if, for my ransom, here 
I lie another year. 

They know this well, my barons and my men, 
Normandy, England, Gascony, Poitou, 
That I had never follower so low 

Whom I would leave in prison to my gain. 

I say it not for a reproach to them. 
But prisoner I am! 

The ancient proverb now I know for siure: 
Death and a prison know nor kin nor tie, 
Since for mere lack of gold they let me lie. 

Much for myself I grieve; for them still more. 

After my death they will have grievous wrong 
If I am prisoner long. 

What marvel that my heart is sad and sore 
When my lord torments my helpless lands! 

Well do I know that, if he held his hands. 
Remembering the common oath we swore, 
I should not here imprisoned with my song, 
Remain a prisoner long. 

They know this well who now are rich and 
strong 
Yoimg gentlemen of Anjou and Touraine, 
That far from them,on hostile bonds I strain. 

They loved me much, but have not loved me 

long. 
Their plains will see no more fair lists arrayed, 
While I lie here betrayed. 

Companions whom I loved, and still do love, 
Geoffroi du Perche and Ansel de Caieux, 
Tell them, my song, that they are friends 
imtrue. 



THE THREE QUEENS 



223 



C'onques vers aus n'en oi cuer faus ne vain. 
S'il me guerroient, il font moult que vilain 
Tant com je serai pris. 

Comtesse suer, vostre pris soverain 
Vos saut et gart cil a cm je me claim 

Et par cui je suix pris. 
Je n'ou di pas de celi de Chartain 

La meire Loweis. 



Never to them did I false-hearted prove; 
But they do villainy if they war on me, 
While I lie here, unfree. 

Countess sister! your sovereign fame 
May he preserve whose help I claim, 

Victim for whom am I! 
I say not this of Chartres' dame, 

Mother of Louis! 



Richard's prison-song, one of the chief monuments of EngHsh liter- 
ature, sounds to every ear, accustomed to twelfth-century verse, as 
charming as when it was household rhyme to 

mi ome et mi baron 
Englois, Normant, Poitevin et Gascon. 

Not only was Richard a far greater king than any Louis ever was, but 
he also composed better poetry than any other king who is known to 
tourists, and, when he spoke to his sister in this cry of the heart 
altogether singular among monarchs, he made law and style, above 
discussion. Whether he meant to reproach his other vsister, Alix of 
Chartres, historians may tell, if they know. If he did, the reproach 
answered its purpose, for the song was written in 1193; Richard was 
ransomed and released in 1 1 94 ; and in 1 1 98 the young Count ' ' Loweis ' ' 
of Chartres and Blois leagued with the Counts of Flanders, Le Perche, 
Guines, and Toulouse, against Philip Augustus, in favor of Coeur-de- 
Lion to whom they rendered homage. In any case, neither Mary nor 
Alice in 1 193 was reigning Countess. Marywas a widow since 1 181, and 
her son Henry was Count in Champagne, apparently a great favourite 
with his uncle Richard Coeur-de-Lion. The life of this Henry of 
Champagne was another twelfth-century romance, but can serve no 
purpose here except to recall the story that his mother, the great 
Countess Mary, died in 1198 of sorrow for the death of this son, who 
was then King of Jerusalem, and was killed, in 1 197, by a fall from the 
window of his palace at Acre. Coeur-de-Lion died in 1199. In 1201, 
Mary's other son, who succeeded Henry, — Count Thibaut HI, — 



224 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

died, leaving a posthumous heir, famous in the thirteenth century as 
Thibaut-le-Grand — the Thibaut of Queen Blanche. 

They were all astonishing — men and women — and filled the world, 
for two hundred years, with their extraordinary energy and genius; 
but the greatest of all was old Queen Eleanor, who survived her son 
Coeur-de-Lion, as well as her two husbands, — Louis-le-Jeune and 
Henry II Plantagenet, — and was left in 1200 still struggling to re- 
pair the evils and fend off the dangers they caused. ''Queen by the 
wrath of God," she called herself, and she knew what just claim she had 
to the rank. Of her two husbands and ten children, little remained 
except her son John, who, by the unanimous voice of his family, his 
friends, his enemies, and even his admirers, achieved a reputation for 
excelling in every form of twelfth-century crime. He was a liar and 
a traitor, as was not uncommon, but he was thought to be also a coward, 
which, in that family, was singular. Some redeeming quality he must 
have had, but none is recorded. His mother saw him running, in his 
masculine, twelfth-century recklessness, to destruction, and she made 
a last and a characteristic effort to save him and Guienne by a treaty 
of amity with the French king, to be secured by the marriage of 
the heir of France, Louis, to Eleanor's granddaughter, John's niece, 
Blanche of Castile, then twelve or thirteen years old. Eleanor herself 
was eighty, and yet she made the journey to Spain, brought back the 
child to Bordeaux, afhanced her to Louis VIII as she had herself been 
affianced in 1137 to Louis VII, and in May, 1200, saw her married. 
The French had then given up their conventional trick of attributing 
Eleanor's acts to her want of morals; and France gave her — as to 
most women after sixty years old — the benefit of the convention 
which made women respectable after they had lost the opportunity to 
be vicious. In French eyes, Eleanor played out the drama according 
to the rules. She could not save John, but she died in 1202, before his 
ruin, and you can still see her lying with her husband and her son 
Richard at Fontevrault in her twelfth-century tomb. 



THE THREE QUEENS 225 

In 1223, Blanche became Queen of France. She was thirty-six 
years old. Her husband, Louis VHI, was ambitious to rival his father, 
Philip Augustus, who had seized Normandy in 1203. Louis undertook 
to seize Toulouse and Avignon. In 1225, he set out with a large army 
in which, among the chief vassals, his cousin Thibaut of Champagne 
led a contingent. Thibaut was five-and-twenty years old, and, like 
Pierre de Dreux, then Duke of Brittany, was one of the most brilliant 
and versatile men of his time, and one of the greatest rulers. As royal 
vassal Thibaut owed forty days' service in the field; but his interests 
were at variance with the King's, and at the end of the term he marched 
home with his men, leaving the King to fall ill and die in Auvergne, 
November 8, 1226, and a child of ten years old to carry on the govern- 
ment as Louis IX. 

Chartres Cathedral has already told the story twice, in stone and 
glass; but Thibaut does not appear there, although he saved the Queen. 
Some member of the royal family must be regent. Queen Blanche 
took the place, and of course the princes of the blood, who thought it 
was their right, united against her. At first, Blanche turned violently 
on Thibaut and forbade him to appear at the coronation at Rheims 
in his own territory, on November 29, as though she held him guilty of 
treason ; but when the league of great vassals united to deprive her of 
the regency, she had no choice but to detach at any cost any member 
of the league, and Thibaut alone offered help. What price she paid 
him was best known to her ; but what price she would be believed to 
have paid him was as well known to her as what had been said of her 
grandmother Eleanor when she changed her allegiance in 1 152. If the 
scandal had concerned Thibaut alone, she might have been well con- 
tent, but Blanche was obliged also to pay desperate court to the papal 
legate. Every member of her husband's family united against her and 
libelled her character with the freedom which enlivened and envenomed 
royal tongues. 



226 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

Maintes paroles en dit en 
Comme d'Iseult et de Tristan. 

Had this been all, she would have cared no more than Eleanor or 
any other queen had cared, for in French drama, real or imaginary, 
such charges were not very serious and hardly uncomplimentary; but 
Iseult had never been accused, over and above her arbitrary views on 
the marriage-contract, of acting as an accomplice with Tristan in 
poisoning King Marc. French convention required that Thibaut 
should have poisoned Louis VIII for love of the Queen, and that 
this secret reciprocal love should control their lives. Fortunately for 
Blanche she was a devout ally of the Church, and the Church be- 
lieved evil only of enemies. The legate and the prelates rallied to her 
support and after eight years of desperate struggle they crushed Pierre 
Mauclerc and saved Thibaut and Blanche. 

For us the poetry is history, and the facts are false. French art 
starts not from facts, but from certain assumptions as conventional as 
a legendary window, and the commonest convention is the Woman. 
The fact, then as now, was Power, or its equivalent in exchange, but 
Frenchmen, while struggling for the Power, expressed it in terms of 
Art. They looked on life as a drama, — and on drama as a phase of 
life — in which the bystanders were bound to assume and accept the 
regular stage-plot. That the plot might be altogether untrue to real 
life affected in no way its interest. To them Thibaut and Blanche were 
bound to act Tristan and Isolde. Whatever they were when off the 
stage, they were lovers on it. Their loves were as real and as reason- 
able as the worship of the Virgin. Courteous love was avowedly a 
form of drama, but not the less a force of society. Illusion for illusion, 
courteous love, in Thibaut's hands, or in the hands of Dante and 
Petrarch, was as substantial as any other convention; — the balance 
of trade, the rights of man, or the Athanasian Creed. In that sense 
the illusions alone were real; if the Middle Ages had reflected only 
what was practical, nothing would have survived for us. 



THE THREE QUEENS 



227 



Thibaut was Tristan, and Is said to have painted his verses on the 
walls of his chateau. If he did, he painted there, in the opinion of M. 
Gaston Paris, better poetry than any that was written on paper or 
parchment, for Thibaut was a great prince and great poet who did 
in both characters whatever he pleased. In modern equivalents, one 
would give much to see the chateau again with the poetry on its walls. 
Provins has lost the verses, but Troyes still keeps some churches and 
glass of Thibaut's time which hold their own with the best. Even of 
Thibaut himself, something survives, and though it were only the 
memories of his seneschal, the famous Sire de Joinville, history and 
France would be poor without him. With Joinville in hand, you may 
still pass an hour in the company of these astonishing thirteenth- 
century men and women: — crusaders who fight, hunt, make love, 
build churches, put up glass windows to the Virgin, buy missals, talk 
scholastic philosophy, compose poetry; Blanche, Thibaut, Perron, 
Joinville, Saint Louis, Saint Thomas, Saint Dominic, Saint Francis — 
you may know them as intimately as you can ever know a world that is 
lost ; and in the case of Thibaut you may know more, for he is still alive 
in his poems; he even vibrates with life. One might try a few verses, 
to see what he meant by courtesy. Perhaps he wrote them for Queen 
Blanche, but, to whomever he sent them, the French were right in 
thinking that she ought to have returned his love (edition of 1742) : — 



Nus hom ne puet ami reconforter 

Se cele non ou il a son cuer mis. 

Pour ce m'estuet sovent plaindre et plourer 

Que nus confors ne me vient, ce m'est vis, 

De la ou j'ai tote ma remembrance. 

Pour bien amer ai sovent esmaiance 

A dire voir. 
Dame, merci! donez moi esperance 

De joie avoir. 



There is no comfort to be found for pain 
Save only where the heart has made its home. 
Therefore I can but murmur and complain 
Because no comfort to my pain has come 
From where I garnered all my happiness. 
From true love have I only earned distress 

The truth to say. 
Grace, lady! give me comfort to possess 

A hope, one day. 



Je ne puis pas sovent a li parler 
Ne remirer les biaus iex de son vis. 
Ce pois moi que je n'i puis aler 
Car ades est mes cuers ententis. 



Seldom the music of her voice I hear 
Or wonder at the beauty of her eyes. 
It grieves me that I may not follow there 
Where at her feet my heart attentive lies. 



228 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



Ho! bele riens, douce sans conoissance, 
Car me mettez en miller attendance 

De bon espoir! 
Dame, merci ! donez moi esperance 

De joie avoir. 

Aucuns si sont qui me vuelent blamer 
Quant je ne di a qui je suis amis; 
Mais ja, dame, ne saura mon penser 
Nus qui soit nes fors vous cui je le dis 
Couardement a pavours a doutance 
Dont puestes vous lors bien a ma semblance 

Mon cuer savoir. 
Dame, merci! donez moi esperance 

De joie avoir. 



Oh, gentle Beauty without consciousness, 
Let me once feel a moment's hopefulness. 

If but one ray! 
Grace, lady! give me comfort to possess 

A hope, one day. 

Certain there are who blame upon me throw 
Because I will not tell whose love I seek; 
But truly, lady, none my thought shall know. 
None that is born, save you to whom I speak 
In cowardice and awe and doubtfulness. 
That you may happily with fearlessness 

My heart essay. 
Grace, lady! give me comfort to possess 

A hope, one day. 



Does Thibaut's verse sound simple? It is the simplicity of the 
thirteenth-century glass — so refined and complicated that sensible 
people are mostly satisfied to feel, and not to understand. Any blun- 
derer in verse, who will merely look at the rhymes of these three stanzas, 
will see that simplicity is about as much concerned there as it is with 
the windows of Chartres; the verses are as perfect as the colours, and 
the versification as elaborate. These stanzas might have been ad- 
dressed to Queen Blanche ; now see how Thibaut kept the same tone of 
courteous love in addressing the Queen of Heaven ! 



De grant travail et de petit esploit 
Vol ce siegle cargie et encombre 
Que tant somes plain de maleurte 

Ke nus ne pens a faire ce qu'il doit, 
Ains avons si le Deauble trouve 

Qu'a lui servir chascuns paine et essaie 

Et Diex ki ot pour nos ja cruel plaie 
Metons arrier et sa grant dignite; 

Molt est hardis qui pour mort ne s'esmaie. 

Diex que tout set et tout puet et tout voit 

Nous auroit tost en entre-deus giete 
Se la Dame plaine de grant bonte 
Pardelez lui pour nos ne li prioit 



With travail great, and little cargo fraught, 

See how our world is labouring in pain; 

So filled we are with love of evil gain 
That no one thinks of doing what he ought. 

But we all hustle in the Devil's train, 
And only in his service toil and pray; 
And God, who suffered for us agony, 

We set behind, and treat him with disdain; 
Hardy is he whom death does not dismay. 

God who rules all, from whom we can hide 
nought, 
Had quickly flung us back to nought again 
But that our gentle, gracious. Lady Queen 
Begged him to spare us, and our pardon 
wrought; 



THE THREE QUEENS 



229 



Si tres douc mot plaisant et savoure 
Le grant courous dou grant Signour apaie; 
Molt par est fox ki autre amor essai 

K'en cestui n'a barat ne fausete 

Ne es autres n'a ne merci de manaie. 

La souris quiert pour son cors garandir 
Centre Fyver la noif et le forment 
Et nous chaitif nous n'alons rien querant 

Quant nous morrons ou nous puissions garir. 

Nous ne cherchons fors k'infer le puant; 
Or esgardes come beste sauvage 
Pourvoit de loin encontre son domage 

Et nous n'avons ne sens ne hardement ; 
II est avis que plain somes de rage. 

Li Deable a getey por nos ravir 

Quatre amegons aeschies de torment; 
Covoitise lance premierement 

Et puis Orguel por sa grant rois emplir 
Et Luxure va le batel trainant 

Felonie les governe et les nage. 

Ensi peschant s'en viegnent au rivage 

Dont Diex nous gart par son commande- 
ment 
En qm sans fons nous feismes homage. 



Striving with words of sweetness to restrain 
Our angry Lord, and his great wrath allay. 
Felon is he who shall her love betray 

Which is pure truth, and falsehood cannot 
feign, 
WhUe all the rest is lie and cheating play. 

The feeble mouse, against the winter's cold, 
Garners the nuts and grain within his cell. 
While man goes groping, without sense to 
tell 

Where to seek refuge against growing old. 
We seek it in the smoking mouth of Hell. 

With the poor beast our impotence compare! 

See him protect his life with utmost care, 
While us nor wit nor courage can compel 

To save our souls, so foolish mad we are. 

The Devil doth in snares our life enfold; 

Four hooks has he with torments baited well; 

And first with Greed he casts a mighty spell. 
And then, to fill his nets, has Pride enrolled, 

And Luxury steers the boat, and fills the sail, 
And Perfidy controls and sets the snare; 
Thus the poor fish are brought to land, and 
there 

May God preserve us and the foe repel! 

Homage to him who saves us from despair! 



A la Dame qui tous les biens avance 

T'en va, changon s'el te vielt escouter 
Onques ne fu nus de millor chaunce. 



To Mary Queen, who passes all compare, 
Go, little song! to her your sorrows tell! 
Nor Heaven nor Earth holds happiness so rare. 



CHAPTER XII 



NICOLETTE AND MARION 



C'est d'Aucassins et de Nicolete. 

Qui vauroit bons vers oir 
Del deport du viel caitif 
De deus biax enfans petis 
Nicolete et Aucassins; 
Des grans paines qu'il soufri 
Et des proueces qu'il fist 
Por s'amie o le cler vis. 
Dox est li cans biax est li dis 
Et cortois et bien asis. 
Nus hom n'est si esbahis 
Tant dolans ni entrepris 
De grant mal amaladis 
Se il I'oit ne soit garis 
Et de joie resbaudis 
Tant par est dou-ce. 



This is of Aucassins and Nicolette. 

Whom would a good ballad please 
By the captive from o'er-seas, 
A sweet song in children's praise, 
Nicolette and Aucassins; 
What he bore for her caress, 
What he proved of his prowess 
For his friend with the bright face? 
The song has charm, the tale has grace, 
And courtesy and good address. 
No man is in such distress, 
Such suflFering or weariness, 
Sick with ever such sickness. 
But he shall, if he hear this, 
Recover all his happiness. 
So sweet it is! 



THIS little thirteenth-century gem is called a "chante-fable," a 
story partly in prose, partly in verse, to be sung according to 
musical notation accompanying the words in the single manuscript 
known, and published in facsimile by Mr. F. W. Bourdillon at Oxford 
in 1896. Indeed, few poems, old or new, have in the last few years 
been more reprinted, translated, and discussed, than ''Aucassins," 
yet the discussion lacks interest to the idle tourist, and tells him little. 
Nothing is known of the author or his date. The second line alone of- 
fers a hint, but nothing more. " Caitif " means in the first place a cap- 
tive, and secondly any unfortunate or wretched man. Critics have 
liked to think that the word means here a captive to the Saracens, and 
that the poet, like Cervantes three or four hundred years later, may 
have been a prisoner to the infidels. What the critics can do, we can 
do. If liberties can be taken with impunity by scholars, we can take 



NICOLETTE AND MARION 231 

the liberty of supposing that the poet was a prisoner in the crusade of 
Coeur-de-Lion and PhiHppe-Auguste; that he had recovered his Hb- 
erty, with his master, in 11 94; and that he passed the rest of his life 
singing to the old Queen Eleanor or to Richard, at Chinon, and to the 
lords of all the chateaux in Guienne, Poitiers, Anjou, and Normandy, 
not to mention England. The living was a pleasant one, as the sunny 
atmosphere of the Southern poetry proves. 

Dox est li cans; biax est li dis, 
Et cortois et bien asis. 

The poet- troubadour who composed and recited " Aucassins" could not 
have been unhappy, but this is the affair of his private life, and not of 
ours. What rather interests us is his poetic motive, "courteous love," 
which gives the tale a place in the direct line between Christian of 
Troyes, Thibaut-le-Grand, and William of Lords. Christian of Troyes 
died in 1 175 ; at least he wrote nothing of a later date, so far as is cer- 
tainly known. Richard Cceur-de-Lion died in 1 199, very soon after 
the death of his half-sister Mary of Champagne. Thibaut-le-Grand 
was born in 1201. William of Lorris, who concluded the line of great 
"courteous" poets, died in 1260 or thereabouts. For our purposes, 
"Aucassins" comes between Christian of Troyes and William of 
Lorris; the trouvere or jogleor, who sang, was a " viel caitif " when the 
Chartres glass was set up, and the Charlemagne window designed, 
about 12 10, or perhaps a little later. When one is not a professor, one 
has not the right to make inept guesses, and, when one is not a critic, 
one should not risk confusing a difficult question by baseless assump- 
tions; but even a summer tourist may without offence visit his 
churches in the order that suits him best; and, for our tour, " Aucas- 
sins" follows Christian and goes hand in hand with Blondel and the 
ch^telain de Coucy, as the most exquisite expression of "courteous 
love. ' ' As one of ' ' Aucassins' ' ' German editors says in his introduction : 
"Love is the medium through which alone the hero surveys the world 
around him, and for which he contemns everything that the age 



232 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

prized: knightly honour; deeds of arms ; father and mother; hell, and 
even heaven; but the mere promise by his father of a kiss from 
Nicolette inspires him to superhuman heroism; while the old poet 
sings and smiles aside to his audience as though he wished them to 
understand that Aucassins, a foolish boy, must not be judged quite 
seriously, but that, old as he was himself, he was just as foolish about 
Nicolette." 

Aucassins was the son of the Count of Beaucaire. Nicolette was a 
young girl whom the Viscount of Beaucaire had redeemed as a captive 
of the Saracens, and had brought up as a god-daughter in his family. 
Aucassins fell in love with Nicolette, and wanted to marry her. The 
action turned on marriage, for, to the Counts of Beaucaire, as to other 
counts, not to speak of kings, high alliance was not a matter of choice 
but of necessity, without which they could not defend their lives, let 
alone their counties; and, to make Aucassins' conduct absolutely 
treasonable, Beaucaire was at that time surrounded and besieged, and 
the Count, Aucassins' father, stood in dire need of his son's help. Au- 
cassins refused to stir unless he could have Nicolette. What were 
honours to him if Nicolette were not to share them. "S'ele estait 
empererisde Colstentinoble u d'Alemaigneuroine de France ud'Engle- 
tere, si aroit il asses peu en li, tant est france et cortoise et de bon aire 
et entecie de toutes bones teces." To be empress of " Colstentinoble" 
would be none too good for her, so stamped is she with nobility and 
courtesy and high-breeding and all good qualities. 

So the Count, after a long struggle, sent for his Viscount and 
threatened to have Nicolette burned alive, and the Viscount himself 
treated no better, if he did not put a stop to the affair; and the Vis- 
count shut up Nicolette, and remonstrated with Aucassins: " Marry a 
king's daughter, or a count's! leave Nicolette alone, or you will never 
see Paradise! " This at once gave Aucassins the excuse for a charming 
tirade against Paradise, for which, a century or two later, he would 
properly have been burned together with Nicolette : — 



NICOLETTE AND MARION 233 

En paradis qu'ai je a faire? Je n'i quier entrer In Paradise what have I to do? I do not 
mais que j'aie Nicolete, ma tres douce amie, care to go there unless I may have Nicoiette, 
que j'aim tant. C'en paradis ne vont fors tex my very sweet friend, whom I love so much, 
gens con je vous dirai. II i vont ci viel prestre For to Paradise goes no one but such people as 
et cil vieil clop et cil manke, qui tote jour et I will tell you of. There go old priests and old 
tote nuit cropent devant ces autex et en ces cripples and the maimed, who all day and all 
vies cruutes, et cil a ces vies capes ereses et night crouch before altars and in old crypts, 
a ces vies tatereles vestues, qui sont nu et and are clothed with old worn-out capes and 
decauc et estrumele, qui moeurent de faim old tattered rags; who are naked and foot- 
et d'esci et de froid et de mesaises. Icil vont bare and sore; who die of hunger and want 
en paradis; aveuc ciax n'ai jou que faire; mais and misery. These go to Paradise; with them 
en infer voil jou aler. Car en infer vont li bel I have nothing to do; but to Hell I am willing 
clerc et li bel cevalier qui sont mort as tornois to go. For, to Hell go the fine scholars and the 
et as rices gueres, et li bien sergant et li franc fair knights who die in tournies and in glorious 
home. Aveuc ciax voil jou aler. Et si vont les wars; and the good men-at-arms and the well- 
beles dames cortoises que eles ont ii amis ou born. With them I will gladly go. And there 
iii avec leurs barons. Et si va li ors et li agens go the fair courteous ladies whether they have 
et li vairs et li gris; et si i vont herpeor et two or three friends besides their lords. And 
jogleor et li roi del siecle. Avec ciax voil jou the gold and silver go there, and the ermines 
aler mais que j'aie Nicolete, ma tres douce and sables; and there go the harpers and jon- 
amie, aveuc moi. gleurs, and the kings of the world. With these 

will I go, if only I may have Nicoiette, my 
very sweet friend, with me. 

Three times, in these short extracts, the word "courteous" has al- 
ready appeared. The story itself is promised as "courteous" ; Nicoiette 
is "courteous"; and the ladies who are not to go to heaven are "cour- 
teous." Aucassins is in the full tide of courtesy, and evidently a pro- 
fessional, or he never would have claimed a place for harpers and 
jongleurs with kings and chevaliers in the next world. The poets of 
"courteous love" showed as little interest in religion as the poets of 
the eleventh century had shown for it in their poems of war. Aucassins 
resembled Christian of Troyes in this, and both of them resembled 
Thibaut, while William of Lorris went beyond them all. The literature 
of the "siecle " was always unreligious, from the " Chanson de Roland " 
to the "Tragedy of Hamlet"; to be "papelard" was unworthy 
of a chevalier; the true knight of courtesy made nothing of defying the 
torments of hell, as he defied the lance of a rival, the frowns of so- 
ciety, the threats of parents or the terrors of magic; the perfect, 



234 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

gentle, courteous lover thought of nothing but his love. Whether the 
object of his love were Nicolette of Beaucaire or Blanche of Castile, 
Mary of Champagne or Mary of Chartres, was a detail which did not 
affect the devotion of his worship. 

So Nicolette, shut up in a vaulted chamber, leaned out at the marble 
window and sang, while Aucassins, when his father promised that he 
should have a kiss from Nicolette, went out to make fabulous slaugh- 
ter of the enemy; and when his father broke the promise, shut himself 
up in his chamber, and also sang; and the action went on by scenes 
and interludes, until, one night, Nicolette let herself down from the 
window, by the help of sheets and towels, into the garden, and, with 
a natural dislike of wetting her skirts which has delighted every 
hearer or reader from that day to this, "prist se vesture a Tune main 
devant et a I'autre deriere si s'escorga por le rousee qu'ele vit grande 
sor I'erbe si s'en ala aval le gardin " ; she raised her skirts with one hand 
in front and the other behind, for the dew which she saw heavy on the 
grass, and went off down the garden, to the tower where Aucassins was 
locked up, and sang to him through a crack in the masonry, and gave 
him a lock of her hair, and they talked till the friendly night-watch 
came by and warned her by a sweetly-sung chant, that she had better 
escape. So she bade farewell to Aucassins, and went on to a breach in 
the city wall, and she looked through it down into the fosse which was 
very deep and very steep. So she sang to herself — 

Peres rois de maeste Father, King of Majesty! 

Or ne sai quel part aler. Now I know not where to flee. 

Se je vois u gaut rame If I seek the forest free, 

Ja me mengeront li le Then the lions will eat me, 

Li lions et li sengler Wolves and wild boars terribly. 

Dent ill a a plente. Of which plenty there there be. 

The lions were a touch of poetic licence, even for Beaucaire, but the 
wolves and wild boars were real enough; yet Nicolette feared even 
them less than she feared the Count, so she slid down what her au- 
dience well knew to be a most dangerous and difficult descent, and 



NICOLETTE AND MARION 235 

reached the bottom with many wounds in her hands and feet, "et li 
san en sali bien en xii Hus" ; so that blood was drawn in a dozen places; 
and then she climbed up the other side, and went off bravely into the 
depths of the forest; an uncanny thing to do by night, as you can still 
see. 

Then followed a pastoral, which might be taken from the works of 
another poet of the same period, whose acquaintance no one can 
neglect to make — Adam de la Halle, a Picard, of Arras. Adam lived, 
it is true, fifty j^ears later than the date imagined for Aucassin, but 
his shepherds and shepherdesses are not so much like, as identical with, 
those of the Southern poet, and all have so singular an air of life that 
the conventional courteous knight fades out beside them. The poet, 
whether bourgeois, professional, noble, or clerical, never much loved 
the peasant, and the peasant never much loved him, or any one else. 
The peasant was a class by himself, and his trait, as a class, was sus- 
picion of everybody and all things, whether material, social, or divine. 
Naturally he detested his lord, whether temporal or spiritual, because 
the seigneur and the priest took his earnings, but he was never servile, 
though a serf; he was far from civil; he was commonly gross. He 
was cruel, but not more so than his betters; and his morals were no 
worse. The object of oppression on all sides, — the invariable victim, 
whoever else might escape, — the French peasant, as a class, held his 
own — and more. In fact, he succeeded in plundering Church, Crown, 
nobility, and bourgeoisie, and was the only class in French history that 
rose steadily in power and well-being, from the time of the crusades to 
the present day, whatever his occasional suffering may have been; 
and, in the thirteenth century, he was suffering. When Nicolette, on 
the morning after her escape, came upon a group of peasants in the 
forest, tending the Count's cattle, she had reason to be afraid of them, 
but instead they were afraid of her. They thought at first that she was 
a fairy. When they guessed the riddle, they kept the secret, though 
they risked punishment and lost the chance of reward by protecting 



236 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



her. Worse than this, they agreed, for a small present, to give a message 
to Aucassins if he should ride that way. 

Aucassins was not very bright, but when he got out of prison after 
Nicolette's escape, he did ride out, at his friends' suggestion, and tried 
to learn what had become of her. Passing through the woods he came 
upon the same group of shepherds and shepherdesses : — 

Esmeres et Martinet, 
Fruelins et Johannes, 
Robecons et Aubries, — 

who might have been living in the Forest of Arden, so like were they 
to the clowns of Shakespeare. They were singing of Nicolette and her 
present, and the cakes and knives and flute they would buy with it. 
Aucassins jumped to the bait they offered him; and they instantly 
began to play him as though he were a trout: — 



"Bel enfant, dix vos i ait!" 

"Dix vos benie!" fait cil qui fu plus enparles 
des autres. 

"Bel enfant," fait il, "redites le cannon que 
vos disiez ore!" 

"Nous n'i dirons," fait cil qui plus fu enparles 
des autres. "Dehait ore qui por vos i 
cantera, biax sire!" 

"Bel enfant!" fait Aucassins, "enne me con- 
nissies vos? " 

"Oil! nos savions bien que vos estes Aucassins, 
nos damoisiax, mais nos ne somes mie a 
vos, ains somes au conte." 

"Bel enfant, si feres, je vos en pri!" 

"Os, por le cuer be!" fait cil. "Por quoi 
canteroie je por vos, s'il ne me seoit! 
Quant il n'a si rice home en cest pais 
sans le cors le conte Garin s'il trovait 
mes bues ne mes vaces ne mes brebis en 
ses pres n'en sen forment qu'il fust mie 
tant hardis por les es a crever qu'il les 
en ossast cacier. Et por quoi canteroie 
je por vos s'il ne me seoit? " 

"Se dix vos ait, bel enfant, si feres! et tenes 
X sous que j'ai ci en une borse! " 



"God bless you, fair child!" said Aucassins. 

" God be with you ! " replied the one who talked 
best. 

"Fair child!" said he, "repeat the song you 
were just singing." 

" We won't ! " replied he who talked best among 
them. "Bad luck to him who shall sing for 
you, good sir!" 

"Fair child," said Aucassins, "do you know 
me?" 

"Yes! we know very well that you are Aucas- 
sins, our young lord; but we are none of 
yours; we belong to the Count." 

"Fair child, indeed you'll do it, I pray you!" 

"Listen, for love of God!" said he. "Why 
should I sing for you if it does not suit 
me? when there is no man so powerful in 
this country, except Count Garin, if hp 
found my oxen or my cows or my sheep 
in his pasture or his close, would not rather 
risk losing his eyes than dare to turn them 
out! and why should I sing for you, if it 
does not suit me!" 

"So God help you, good child, indeed you 
will do it! and take these ten sous that 
I have here in my purse. " 



NICOLETTE AND MARION • 237 

"Sire les deniers prenderons nos, mais je ne "Sire, the money we will take, but I'll not 

vos canterai mie, car j'en ai jure. Mais sing to you, for I've sworn it. But I 

je le vos conterai se vos voles." will tell it you, if you like." 

"Depar diu!" faits Aucassins. "Encore aim "For God's sake!" said Aucassins; "better 

je mix conter que nient . ' ' telling than nothing ! ' ' 

Ten sous was no small gift ! twenty sous was the value of a strong 
ox. The poet put a high money-value on the force of love, but he set 
a higher value on it in courtesy. These boors were openly insolent to 
their young lord, trying to extort money from him, and threatening 
him with telling his father; but they were in their right, and Nicolette 
was in their power. At heart they meant Aucassins well, but they were 
rude and grasping, and the poet used them in order to show how love 
made the true lover courteous even to clowns. Aucassins' gentle cour- 
tesy is brought out by the boors' greed, as the colours in the window 
were brought out and given their value by a bit of blue or green. The 
poet, having got his little touch of colour rightly placed, let the peas- 
ants go. "Cil qui fu plus enparles des autres," having been given his 
way and his money, told Aucassins what he knew of Nicolette and her 
message; so Aucassins put spurs to his horse and cantered into the 
forest, singing : — 

Se diu plaist le pere fort So please God, great and strong, 

Je vos reverai encore I will find you now ere long, 

Suer, douce a-mie! Sister, sweet friend! 

But the peasant had singular attraction for the poet. Whether the 
character gave him a chance for some clever mimicry, which was one of 
his strong points as a story-teller: or whether he wanted to treat his 
subjects, like the legendary windows, in pairs; or whether he felt that 
the forest-scene specially amused his audience, he immediately intro- 
duced a peasant of another class, much more strongly coloured, or 
deeply shadowed. Every one in the audience was — and, for that 
matter, still would be — familiar with the great forests, the home of 
half the fairy and nursery tales of Europe, still wild enough and 
extensive enough to hide in, although they have now comparatively 



238 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

few lions, and not many wolves or wild boars or serpents such as NIco- 
lette feared. Every one saw, without an effort, the young damoiseau 
riding out with his hound or hawk, looking for game; the lanes under 
the trees, through the wood, or the thick underbrush before lanes were 
made; the herdsmen watching their herds, and keeping a sharp look- 
out for wolves; the peasant seeking lost cattle; the black kiln-men 
burning charcoal ; and in the depths of the rocks or swamps or thickets 
— the outlaw. Even now, forests like Rambouillet, or Fontainebleau 
or Compi^gne are enormous and wild; one can see Aucassins breaking 
his way through thorns and branches in search of Nicolette, tearing 
his clothes and wounding himself "en xl Uus u en xxx," until evening 
approached, and he began to weep for disappointment: — 

II esgarda devant lui enmi la voie si vit un As he looked before him along the way he 

vallet tel que je vos dirai. Grans estoit et saw a man such as I will tell you. Tall he was, 

mervellex et lais et hidex. II avoit une grande and menacing, and ugly, and hideous. He had 

hure plus noire qu'une carbouclee, et avoit a great mane blacker than charcoal and had 

plus de planne paume entre ii ex, et avoit vmes more than a full palm-width between his two 

grandes joes et un grandisme nez plat, et une eyes, and had big cheeks, and a huge flat nose 

grans narines lees et unes grosses levres plus and great broad nostrils, and thick lips redder 

rouges d'unes carbounees, et uns grans dens than raw beef, and large ugly yellow teeth, and 

gaunes et lais et estoit caucies d'uns housiax was shod with hose and leggings of raw hide 

et d'uns soUers de buef f retes de tille dusque laced with bark cord to above the knee, and was 

deseure le genol et estoit af ules d'une cape a muffled in a cloak without lining, and was lean- 

ii envers si estoit apoiies sor une grande mague. ing on a great club. Aucassins came upon him 

Aucassins s'enbati sor lui s'eut grand paor suddenly, and had great fear when he saw him. 
quant il le sor vit. . . . 

"Baix frere, dix ti ait!" "Fair brother, good day!" said he. 

"Dix vos benie! " fait cil. " God bless you! " said the other. 

"Se dix t'ait, que fais tu ilec?" "As God help you, what do you here?" 

"A vos que monte?" fait cil. "What is that to you?" said the other. 

"Nient!" fait Aucassins ; "jenel vos demant "Nothing!" said Aucassins; "I ask only 

se por bien non." from good-will." 

"Mais pour quoi ploures vos?" fait cil, "But why are you crying!" said the other, 

"et faites si fait doel? Certes se j'estoie ausi "and mourning so loud? Sure, if I were as 

rices hom que vos estes, tos li mons ne me great a man as you are, nothing on earth would 

feroit mie plorer." make me cry." 

"Ba! me conissies vos!" fait Aucassins. "Bah! you know me?" said Aucassins. 

"Oie! je sai bien que vos estes Aucassins "Yes, I know very well that you are Aucas- 

li fix le conte, et se vos me dites por quoi vos sins, the count's son: and if you will tell me 

plores je vos dirai que je fac ici." what you are crying for, I will tell you what 

I am doing here." 



NICOLETTE AND MARION 



239 



Aucassins seemed to think this an equal bargain. All damolseaux 
were not as courteous as Aucassins, nor all "varlets" as rude as his 
peasants; we shall see how the young gentlemen of Picardy treated 
the peasantry for no offence at all; but Aucassins carried a softer, 
Southern temper in a happier climate, and, with his invariable gentle 
courtesy, took no offence at the familiarity with which the ploughman 
treated him. Yet he dared not tell the truth, so he invented, on the 
spur of the moment, an excuse; — he has lost, he said, a beautiful 
white hound. The peasant hooted — 



"Os!" fait cil; "por le cuer que cil sires eut 
en sen ventre! que vos plorastes por un cien 
puant ! Mai dehait ait qui ja mais vos prisera 
quant il n'a si rice home en ceste tere se vos 
peres Ten mandoit x u xv u xx qu'il ne les 
envoyast trop volontiers et s'en esteroit trop 
lies. Mais je dois plorer et dol faire?" 

"Et tu de quoi frere?" 

"Sire, je le vos dirai! J'estoie Hues a un rice 
vilain si cagoie se carue. iiii hues i avoit. Or a 
iii jors qu'il m'avint une grande malaventure 
que je perdi le mellor de mes hues Roget le mel- 
lor de me carue. Si le vols querant. Si ne 
mengai ne ne bue iii jors a passes. Si n'os aler 
a le vile c'on me metroit en prison que je ne 
I'ai de quoi saure. De tot I'avoir du monde 
n'ai je plus vaillant que vos vees sor le cors 
de mi. Une lasse mere avoie; si n'avoit plus 
vaillant que une keutisele; si li a on sacie de 
desous le dos; si gist a pur I'estrain; si m'en 
poise asses plus que demi. Car avoirs va et 
vient; se j'ai or perdu je gaaignerai une autre 
fois; si sorrai mon buef quant je porrai, ne ja 
por Qou n'en plorerai. Et vos plorastes por 
un cien de longaigne! Mai dehait ait qui mais 
vos prisera!" 

"Certes tu es de bon confort, biax frere! 
que benois sois tu! Et que valoit tes bues! " 

"Sire, XX sous m'en demande on, je n'en 
puis mie abatre une seule maille." 

"Or, tien," fait Aucassins, "xx que j'ai ci 
en me borse; si sol ten buef 1" 



"Listen!" said he; "By the heart God had 
in his body! that you should cry for a stinking 
dog! Bad luck to him who ever prizes you! 
When there is no man in this land so great, if 
your father sent to him for ten or fifteen or 
twenty, but would fetch them very gladly, 
and be only too pleased. But I ought to cry 
and mourn." 

"And why you, brother?" 

"Sir, I will tell you. I was hired out to a 
rich farmer to drive his plough. There were four 
oxen. Now three days ago I had a great mis- 
fortune, for I lost the best of my oxen, Roget, 
the best of my team. I am looking to find him. 
I 've not eaten or drunk these three days past. 
I dare n't go to the town, for they would put 
me in prison, as I've nothing to pay with. In 
all the world I've not the worth of anything 
but what you see on my body. I 've a poor old 
mother who owned nothing but a feather mat- 
tress, and they 've dragged it from under her 
back, so she lies on the bare straw; and she 
troubles me more than myself. For riches 
come and go ; if I lose to-day, I gain to-morrow; 
I will pay for my ox when I can, and will not 
cry for that. Andyoucry for a filthy dog! Bad 
luck to him who ever thinks well of you!" 

"Truly, you counsel well, good brother! 
God bless you! And what was your ox worth? " 

"Sir, they ask me twenty sous for it. I 
cannot beat them down a single centime." 

"Here are twenty," said Aucassins, "that 
I have in my purse! Pay for your ox! " 



240 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



"Sire!" fait il, "grans mercies! et dix vos "Sir!" said he; "many thanks! and God 
laist trover ce que vox queres! " grant you find what you seek! " 

The little episode was thrown in without rhyme or reason to the 
rapid emotion of the love-story, as though the jongleur were showing 
his own cleverness and humour, at the expense of his hero, as jon- 
gleurs had a way of doing; but he took no such liberties with his hero- 
ine. While Aucassins tore through the thickets on horseback, crying 
aloud, Nicolette had built herself a little hut in the depths of the 
forest: — 



Ele prist des flors de lis 
Et de I'erbe du garris 
Et de le foille autresi; 
Une belle loge en fist, 
Ainques tant gente ne vi. 
Jure diu qui ne menti 
Se par la vient Aucassins 
Et il pot I'amor de 11 
Ne si repose un petit 
Ja ne sera ses amis 
N'ele s'a-mie. 



So she twined the lilies' flower, 
Roofed with leafy branches o'er, 
Made of it a lovely bower, 
With the freshest grass for floor, 
Such as never mortal saw. 
By God's Verity, she swore. 
Should Aucassins pass her door, 
And not stop for love of her, 
To repose a moment there. 
He shoidd be her love no more, 
Nor she his dear ! 



So night came on, and Nicolette went to sleep, a little distance 
away from her hut. Aucassins at last came by, and dismounted, sprain- 
ing his shoulder in doing it. Then he crept into the little hut, and lying 
on his back, looked up through the leaves to the moon, and sang: — 



Estoilete, je te voi, 
Que la lune trait a soi. 
Nicolete est aveuc toi, 
M'amiete o le blond poll. 
Je quid que dix le veut avoir 
Por la lumiere de soir 
Que par li plus clere soit. 
Vien, amie, je te proie! 
Ou monter vauroie droit, 
Que que fust du recaoir. 
Que fuisse lassus o toi 
Ja te baiseroi estroit. 
Se j'estoie fix a roi 
S'afieries vos bien a moi 
Suer douce amie! 



I can see you, little star, 
That the moon draws through the air. 
Nicolette is where you are. 
My own love with the blonde hair. 
I think God must want her near 
To shine down upon us here 
That the evening be more clear. 
Come down, dearest, to my prayer, 
Or I climb up where you are! 
Though I fell, I would not care. 
If I once were with you there 
I would kiss you closely, dear! 
If a monarch's son I were 
You should all my kingdom share, 
Sweet friend, sister! 



NICOLETTE AND MARION 



241 



How NIcolette heard him sing, and came to him and rubbed his 
shoulder and dressed his wounds as though he were a child ; and how 
in the morning they rode away together, like Tennyson's "Sleeping 
Beauty," — 

O'er the hills and far away 
Beyond their utmost purple rim, 
Beyond the night, beyond the day, 

singing as they rode, the story goes on to tell or to sing in verse — 



Aucassins, li biax, li blons, 
Li gentix, li amorous, 
Est issous del gaut parfont, 
Entre ses bras ses amors 
Devant lui sor son argon. — 
Les ex h baise et le front, 
Et le bouce et le menton. 
EUe I'a mis a raison. 
"Aucassins, biax amis dox, 
"En quel tere en irons nous?" 
"Douce amie, que sai jou? 
" Moi ne caut u nous aillons, 
" En forest u en destor 
"Mais que je soie aveuc vous." 
Passent les vaus et les mons, 
Et les viles et les bors 
A la mer vinrent au jor. 
Si descendent u sablon 
Les le rivage. 



Aucassins, the brave, the fair. 
Courteous knight and gentle lover, 
From the forest dense came forth; 
In his arms his love he bore 
On his saddle-bow before; 
Her eyes he kisses and her mouth. 
And her forehead and her chin. 
She brings him back to earth again: 
"Aucassins, my love, my own, 
"To what country shall we turn?" 
"Dearest angel, what say you? 
"I care nothing where we go, 
"In the forest or outside, 
"While you on my saddle ride." 
So they pass by hill and dale. 
And the city, and the town. 
Till they reach the morning pale. 
And on sea-sands set them down. 
Hard by the shore. 



There we will leave them, for their further adventures have not 
much to do with our matter. Like all the romans, or nearly all, "Au- 
cassins" is singularly pure and refined. Apparently the ladies of cour- 
teous love frowned on coarseness and allowed no licence. Their 
power must have been great, for the best romans are as free from 
grossness as the "Chanson de Roland" itself, or the church glass, or 
the illuminations in the manuscripts; and as long as the power of the 
Church ruled good society, this decency continued. As far as women 
were concerned, they seem always to have been more clean than the 
men, except when men painted them in colours which men liked best. 



242 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

Perhaps society was actually cleaner in the thirteenth century than 
in the sixteenth, as Saint Louis was more decent than Francis I, and 
as the bath was habitual in the twelfth century and exceptional at 
the Renaissance. The rule held good for the bourgeoisie as well as 
among the dames cortoises. Christian and Thibaut, " Aucassins" and 
the " Roman de la Rose," may have expressed only the tastes of high- 
born ladies, but other poems were avowedly bourgeois, and among the 
bourgeois poets none was better than Adam de la Halle. Adam wrote 
also for the court, or at least for Robert of Artois, Saint Louis's nephew, 
whom he followed to Naples in 1284, but his poetry was as little aristo- 
cratic as poetry could well be, and most of it was cynically — almost 
defiantly — middle-class, as though the weavers of Arras were his 
only audience, and recognized him and the objects of his satire in every 
verse. The bitter personalities do not concern us, but, at Naples, to 
amuse Robert of Artois and his court, Adam composed the first of 
French comic operas, which had an immense success, and, as a pas- 
toral poem, has it still. The Idyll of Arras was a singular contrast to 
the Idyll of Beaucaire, but the social value was the same in both; 
Robin and Marion were a pendant to Aucassins and Nicolette; Robin 
was almost a burlesque on Aucassins, while Marion was a Northern, 
energetic, intelligent, pastoral Nicolette. 

"Li Gieus de Robin et de Marion" had little or no plot. Adam 
strung together, on a thread of dialogue and by a group of suitable 
figures, a number of the favourite songs of his time, followed by the 
favourite games, and ending with a favourite dance, the "tresca." 
The songs, the games, and the dances do not concern us, but the dia- 
logue runs along prettily, with an air of Flemish realism, like a picture 
of Teniers, as unlike that of "courtoisie" as Teniers was to Guido 
Reni. Underneath it all a tone of satire made itself felt, good-natured 
enough, but directed wholly against the men. 

The scene opens on Marion tending her sheep, and singing the pretty 
air: "Robin m'aime, Robin ma'a," after which enters a chevalier or 



NICOLETTE AND MARION 243 

esquire, on horseback, and sings: " Je me repairoie du tournoiement." 
Then follows a dialogue between the chevalier and Marion, with no 
other'object than to show off the charm of Marion against the masculine 
defects of the knight. Being, like most squires, somewhat slow of ideas 
in conversation with young women, the gentleman began by asking 
for sport for his falcon. Has she seen any duck down by the river? 

Mais veis tu par chi devant 
Vers ceste riviere nul ane? 

"Ane," it seems, was the usual word for wild duck, the falcon's prey, 
and Marion knew it as well as he, but she chose to misunderstand 

him : — 

C'esf une bete qui recane; 
J'en vis ier iii sur che quemin, 
Tous quarchies aler au moulin. 
Est che chou que vous demandes? 

**It is a beast that brays; I saw three yesterday on the road, all with 
loads going to the mill. Is that what you ask? " That is not what the 
squire has asked, and he is conscious that Marion knows it, but he 
tries again. If she has not seen a duck, perhaps she has seen a heron : — 

Hairons, sire? par me foi, non! 
Je n'en vi nesun puis quareme 
Que j'en vi mengier chies dame Eme 
Me taiien qui sont ches brebis. 

"Heron, sir! by my faith, no! I've not seen one since Lent when I 
saw some eaten at my grandmother's — Dame Emma who owns these 
sheep." ** Hairons," it seems, meant also herring, and this wilful mis- 
understanding struck the chevalier as carrying jest too far: — 

Par foi! or suis j'ou esbaubis! 
N'ainc mais je ne fui si gabes! 

"On my word, I am silenced! never in my life was I so chaffed!" 
Marion herself seems to think her joke a little too evident, for she takes 
up the conversation in her turn, only to conclude that she likes Robin 



244 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

better than she does the knight; he Is gayer, and when he plays his 
musette he starts the whole village dancing. At this, the squire makes 
a declaration of love with such energy as to spur his horse almost 
over her: — 

Aimi, sire! ostez vo cheval! 
A poi que il ne m'a blechie. 
Li Robin ne regiete mie 
Quand je voie apres se karue. 

"Aimi!" is an exclamation of alarm, real or affected: "Dear me, sir! 
take your horse away! he almost hurt me! Robin's horse never rears 
when I go behind his plough!" Still the knight persists, and though 
Marion still tells him to go away, she asks his name, which he says 
is Aubert, and so gives her the catchword for another song: — " Vos 
perdes vo paine, sire Aubert!" — which ends the scene with a duo. 

The second scene begins with a duo of Marion and Robin, followed 
by her giving a softened account of the chevalier's behaviour, and then 
they lunch on bread and cheese and apples, and more songs follow, 
till she sends him to get Baldwin and Walter and Peronette and the 
pipers, for a dance. In his absence the chevalier returns and becomes 
very pressing in his attentions, which gives her occasion to sing: — 

J'oi Robin flagoler 
Au flagol d'argent. 

When Robin enters, the knight picks a quarrel with him for not 
handling properly the falcon which he has caught in the hedge; and 
Robin gets a severe beating. The scene ends by the horseman carrying 
off Marion by force; but he soon gets tired of carrying her against her 
will, and drops her, and disappears once for all. 

Certes voirement sui je beste' 
Quant a ceste beste m'areste. 
Adieu, bergiere! 

B§te the knight certainly was, and was meant to be, In order to 
give the necessary colour to Marion's charms. Chevaliers were seldom 



NICOLETTE AND MARION 245 

intellectually brilliant in the mediaeval romans, and even the "Chan- 
sons de Geste" liked better to talk of their prowess than of their wit; 
but Adam de la Halle, who felt no great love for chevaliers, was not 
satisfied with ridiculing them in order to exalt Marion; his second act 
was devoted to exalting Marion at the expense of her own boors. 

The first act was given up to song; the second, to games and dances. 
The games prove not to be wholly a success; Marion is bored by them, 
and wants to dance. The dialogue shows Marion trying constantly to 
control her clowns and make them decent, as Blanche of Castile had 
been all her life trying to control her princes, and Mary of Chartres 
her kings. Robin is a rustic counterpart to Thibaut. He is tamed by 
his love of Marion, but he has just enough intelligence to think well 
of himself, and to get himself into trouble without knowing how to 
get out of it. Marion loves him much as she would her child ; she makes 
only a little fun of him; defends him from the others; laughs at his 
jealousy; scolds him on occasion; flatters his dancing; sends him on 
errands, to bring the pipers or drive away the wolf; and what is most 
to our purpose, uses him to make the other peasants decent. Walter 
and Baldwin and Hugh are coarse, and their idea of wit is to shock 
the women or make Robin jealous. Love makes gentlemen even of 
boors, whether noble or villain, is the constant moral of mediaeval 
story, and love turns Robin into a champion of decency. When, at 
last, Walter, playing the jongleur, begins to repeat a particularly 
coarse fabliau, or story in verse, Robin stops him short — 

Ho, Gautier, je n'en voeil plus! fi! 
Dites, seres vous tous jours teus! 
Vous estes un ors menestreus ! 

"Ho, Walter! I want no more of that: Shame! Say! are you going to 
be always like that? You're a dirty beggar!" A fight seems inevitable, 
but Marion turns it into a dance, and the whole party, led by the 
pipers, with Robin and Marion at the head of the band, leave the stage 
in the dance which is said to be still known in Italy as the " tresca." 



246 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

Marion is in her way as charming as Nicolette, but we are less in- 
terested in her charm than in her power. Always the woman appears 
as the practical guide; the one who keeps her head, even in love: — 

EUe I'a mis a raison: 
"Aucassins, biax amis dox, 

En quele tere en irons nous? " 
"Douce amie, que sai jou? 

Moi ne caut ou nous aillons." 

The man never cared ; he was always getting himself into crusades, or 
feuds, or love, or debt, and depended on the woman to get him out. 
The story was always of Charles VII and Jeanne d'Arc, or Agnes 
Sorel. The woman might be the good or the evil spirit, but she was 
always the stronger force. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were 
a period when men were at their strongest; never before or since have 
they shown equal energy in such varied directions, or such intelli- 
gence in the direction of their energy ; yet these marvels of history, — 
these Plantagenets ; these scholastic philosophers; these architects of 
Rheims and Amiens; these Innocents, and Robin Hoods and Marco 
Polos ; these crusaders, who planted their enormous fortresses all over 
the Levant ; these monks who made the wastes and barrens yield har- 
vests; — all, without apparent exception, bowed down before the 
woman. 

Explain it who will! We are not particularly interested in the 
explanation ; it is the art we have chased through this French forest, 
like Aucassins hunting for Nicolette; and the art leads always to the 
w^oman. Poetry, like the architecture and the decoration, harks back 
to the same standard of taste. The specimens of Christian of Troyes, 
Thibaut, Tristan, Aucassins, and Adam de la Halle were mild admissions 
of feminine superiority compared with some that were more in vogue. 
If Thibaut painted his love- verses on the walls of his castle, he put 
there only what a more famous poet, who may have been his friend, 
set on the walls of his Chateau of Courteous Love, which, not being 



NICOLETTE AND MARION 247 

made with hands or with stone, but merely with verse, has not wholly 
perished. The " Roman de la Rose" is the end of true mediaeval poetry 
and goes with the Sainte-Chapelle in architecture, and three hundred 
years of more or less graceful imitation or variation on the same themes 
which followed. Our age calls it false taste, and no doubt our age is 
right; — every age is right by its own standards as long as its standards 
amuse it; — but after all, the " Roman de la Rose" charmed Chaucer, 
— it may well charm you. The charm may not be that of Mont-Saint- 
Michel or of Roland; it has not the grand manner of the eleventh 
century, or the jewelled brilliancy of the Chartres lancets, or the 
splendid self-assertion of the roses : but even to this day it gives out 
a faint odour of Champagne and Touraine, of Provence and Cyprus. 
One hears Thibaut and sees Queen Blanche. 

Of course, this odour of true sanctity belongs only to the " Roman" 
of William of Lords, which dates from the death of Queen Blanche and 
of all good things, about 1250; a short allegory of courteous love in 
forty-six hundred and seventy lines. To modern taste, an allegory of 
-forty-six hundred and seventy lines seems to be not so short as it 
might be; but the fourteenth century found five thousand verses 
totally inadequate to the subject, and, about 1300, Jean de Meung 
added eighteen thousand lines, the favourite reading of society for 
one or two hundred years, but beyond our horizon. The " Roman" of 
William of Lorris was complete in itself; it had shape; beginning, 
middle, and end; even a certain realism, action, — almost life! 

The Rose is any feminine ideal of beauty, intelligence, purity, or 
grace, — always culminating in the Virgin, — but the scene is the 
Court of Love, and the action is avowedly in a dream, without time or 
place. The poet's tone is very pure; a little subdued; at times sad; and 
the poem ends sadly; but all the figures that were positively hideous 
were shut out of the court, and painted on the outside walls: — 
Hatred; Felony; Covetousness ; Envy; Poverty; Melancholy, and 
Old Age. Death did not appear. The passion for representing death in 



248 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



its horrors did not belong to the sunny atmosphere of the thirteenth 
century, and indeed jarred on French taste always, though the Church 
came to insist on it ; but Old Age gave the poet a motive more artistic, 
foreshadowing Death, and quite sad enough to supply the necessary 
contrast. The poet who approached the walls of the chateau and saw, 
outside, all the unpleasant facts of life conspicuously posted up, as 
though to shut them out of doors, hastened to ask for entrance, and, 
when once admitted, found a court of ideals. Their names matter 
little. In the mind of William of Lorris, every one would people his 
ideal world with whatever ideal figures pleased him, and the only 
personal value of William's figures is that they represent what he 
thought the thirteenth-century ideals of a perfect society. Here is 
Courtesy, with a translation long thought to be by Chaucer: — 



Apres se tenoit Cortoisie 

Qui moult estoit de tous prisie. 

Si n'ere orgueilleuse ne fole. 

C'est cele qui a la karole, 

La soe merci, m'apela, 

Ains que nule, quand je vins la. 

Et ne fut ne nice n'umbrage, 

Mais sages auques, sans outrage, 

De biaus respons et de biaus dis. 

One nus ne fu par li laidis, 

Ne ne porta nului rancune, 

Et fu clere comme la lune 

Est avers les autres estoiles 

Qui ne resemblent que chandoiles. 

Faitisse estoit et avenant; 

Je ne sai fame plus plaisant. 

Ele ert en toutes cors bien digne 

D'estre empereris ou roine. 



And next that daunced Courtesye, 

That preised was of lowe and hye, 

For neither proude ne foole was she; 

She for to daunce called me, 

I pray God yeve hir right good grace, 

When I come first into the place. 

She was not nyce ne outrageous, 

But wys and ware and vertuous; 

Of faire speche and of faire answere; 

Was never wight mysseid of her, 

Ne she bar rancour to no wight. 

Clere browne she was, and thereto bright 



Of face, of body avenaunt. 
I wot no lady so pleasaunt. 
She were worthy forto bene 
An empresse or crowned quene. 



You can read for yourselves the characters, and can follow the 
simple action which owes its slight interest only to the constant effort 
of the dreamer to attain his ideal, — the Rose, — 'and owes its charm 
chiefly to the constant disappointment and final defeat. An under- 
tone of sadness runs through it, felt already in the picture of Time 



NICOLETTE AND MARION 



249 



which foreshadows the end of Love 
with it the end of hope : — 

Li tens qui s'en va nuit et jor, 
Sans repos prendre et sans sejor, 
Et qui de nous se part et emble 
Si celeement qu'il nous semble 
Qu'il s'arreste ades en un point, 
Et il ne s'i arreste point, 
Ains ne fine de trespasser. 
Que nus ne puet neis penser 
Quex tens ce est qui est presens; 
S'el demandes as clers lisans, 
Ainfois que Ten I'eust pense 
Seroit il ja trois tens passe; 
Li tens qui ne puet sejourner, 
Ains vait tous jors sans retorner. 
Com I'iaue qui s'avale toute, 
N'U n'en retourne arriere goute; 
Li tens vers qui noient ne dure, 
Ne fer ne chose tant soit dure, 
Car il gaste tout et menjue; 
Li tens qui tote chose mue, 
Qui tout fait croistre et tout norist, 
Et qui tout use et tout porrist. 



the Rose — and her court, and 



The tyme that passeth nyght and daye. 

And restelesse travayleth aye. 

And steleth from us so prively. 

That to us semeth so sykerly 

That it in one poynt dwelleth never. 

But gothe so fast, and passeth aye 

That there nys man that thynke may 
What tyme that now present is; 
Asketh at these clerkes this. 
For or men thynke it readily 
Thre tymes ben ypassed by. 
The tyme that may not sojourne 
But goth, and may never returne, 
As water that down renneth ay. 
But never drope retourne may. 
There may no thing as time endure, 
Metall nor earthly creature: 
For alle thing it frette and shall. 
The tyme eke that chaungith all, 
And all doth waxe and fostered be. 
And alle thing distroieth he. 



The note of sadness has begun, which the poets were to find so 
much more to their taste than the note of gladness. From the "Roman 
de la Rose" to the "Ballade des Dames du Temps jadis" was a short 
step for the Middle- Age giant Time, — a poor two hundred years. 
Then Villon woke up to ask what had become of the Roses: — 



Ou est la tres sage Helois 
Pour qui fut chastie puis mojTie, 
Pierre Esbaillart a Saint Denis? 
Pour son amour ot cest essoyne. 

Et Jehanne la bonne Lorraine 
Qu' Englois brulerent a Rouan; 
Ou sont elles, Vierge Souvraine? 
Mais ou sont les neiges dantan? 



Where is the virtuous Heloise, 
For whom suffered, then turned monk, 
Pierre Ab61ard at Saint-Denis? 
For his love he bore that pain. 

And Jeanne d'Arc, the good Lorraine, 
Whom the English burned at Rouen I 
Where are they, Virgin Queen? 
But where are the snows of spring? 



Between the death of William of Lorris and the advent of John of 
Meung, a short half-century (i 250-1 300), the Woman and the Rose 



250 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

became bankrupt. Satire took the place of worship. Man, with his 
usual monkey-like malice, took pleasure in pulling down what he had 
built up. The Frenchman had made what he called "fausse route." 
William of Lorris was first to see it, and say it, with more sadness and 
less bitterness than Villon showed ; he won immortality by telling how 
he, and the thirteenth century in him, had lost himself in pursuing his 
Rose, and how he had lost the Rose, too, waking up at last to the dull 
memory of pain and sorrow and death, that "tout porrist." The world 
had still a long march to make from the Rose of Queen Blanche to the 
guillotine of Madame du Barry; but the ** Roman de la Rose" made 
epoch. For the first time since Constantine proclaimed the reign of 
Christ, a thousand years, or so, before Philip the Fair dethroned Him, 
the deepest expression of social feeling ended with the word : Despair. 



CHAPTER XIII 



LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME 



Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio, 
Umile ed alta piu che creatura, 
Termine fisso d'eterno consiglio, 

Tu sei colei che Tumana natura 
Nobilitasti si, che il suo fat tore 
Non disdegno di farsi sua fattura. • . 

La tua benignita non pur soccorre 
A chi dimanda, ma molte fiate 
Liberamente al dimandar precorre. 

In te misericordia, in te pietate, 
In te magnificenza, in te s'aduna 
Quantunque in creatura e di bontate. 



Vergine bella, che di sol vestita. 
Coronata di stelle, al sommo sole 
Piacesti si che'n te sua luce ascose; 
Amor mi spinge a dir di te parole; 
Ma non so 'ncominciar senza tu aita, 
E di colui ch'amando in te si pose. 
Invoco lei che ben sempre rispose 
Chi la chiamo con fede. 
Vergine, s'a mercede 
Miseria estrema dell' umane cose 
Giammai ti volse, al mio prego t'inchina! 
Soccorri alia mia guerra, 
Bench'i sia terra, e tu del del regina! 



DANTE composed one of these prayers; Petrarch the other. 
Chaucer translated Dante's prayer in the "Second Nonnes 
Tale." He who will may undertake to translate either; — not I! The 
Virgin, in whom is united whatever goodness is in created being, might 
possibly, in her infinite grace, forgive the sacrilege; but her power has 
limits, if not her grace; and the whole Trinity, with the Virgin to aid, 
had not the power to pardon him who should translate Dante and 
Petrarch. The prayers come in here, not merely for their beauty, — • 
although the Virgin knows how beautiful they are, whether man knows 
it or not; but chiefly to show the good faith, the depth of feeling, the 
intensity of conviction, with which society adored its ideal of human 
perfection. 

The Virgin filled so enormous a space in the life and thought of 
the time that one stands now helpless before the mass of testimony to 
her direct action and constant presence in every moment and form of 
the illusion which men thought they thought their existence. The 
twelfth and thirteenth centuries believed in the supernatural, and 



252 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

might almost be said to have contracted a miracle-habit, as morbid as 
any other form of artificial stimulant; they stood, like children, in an 
attitude of gaping wonder before the miracle of miracles which they felt 
in their own consciousness; but one can see in this emotion, which is, 
after all, not exclusively infantile, no special reason why they should 
have so passionately flung themselves at the feet of the Woman rather 
than of the Man. Dante wrote in 1300, after the height of this emotion 
had passed ; and Petrarch wrote half a century later still ; but so slowly 
did the vision fade, and so often did it revive, that, to this day, it re- 
mains the strongest symbol with which the Church can conjure. 

Men were, after all, not wholly inconsequent; their attachment to 
Mary rested on an instinct of self-preservation. They knew their own 
peril. If there was to be a future life, Mary was their only hope. She 
alone represented Love. The Trinity were, ©i* was. One, and could, by 
the nature of its essence, administer justice alone. Only childlike illu- 
sion could expect a personal favour from Christ. Turn the dogma 
as one would, to this it must logically come. Call the three Godheads 
by what names one Hked, still they must remain One; must administer 
one justice; must admit only one law. In that law, no human weakness 
or error could exist; by its essence it was infinite, eternal, immutable. 
There was no crack and no cranny in the system, through which 
human frailty could hope for escape. One was forced from corner 
to corner by a remorseless logic until one fell helpless at Mary's 
feet. 

Without Mary, man had no hope except in atheism, and for athe- 
ism the world was not ready. Hemmed back on that side, men rushed 
like sheep to escape the butcher, and were driven to Mary; only too 
happy in finding protection and hope in a being who could understand 
the language they talked, and the excuses they had to offer. How pas- 
sionately they worshipped Mary, the Cathedral of Chartres shows; and 
how this worship elevated the whole sex, all the literature and history 
of the time proclaim. If you need more proof, you can read more 



LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME 253 

Petrarch ; but still one cannot realize how actual Mary was, to the men 
and women of the Middle Ages, and how she was present, as a matter 
of course, whether by way of miracle or as a habit of life, throughout 
their daily existence. The surest measure of her reality is the enor- 
mous money value they put on her assistance, and the art that was 
lavished on her gratification, but an almost equally certain sign is 
the casual allusion, the chance reference to her, which assumes her 
presence. 

The earliest prose writer in the French language, who gave a picture 
of actual French life, was Joinville; and although he wrote after the 
death of Saint Louis and of William of Lorris and Adam de la Halle, 
in the full decadence of Philip the Fair, toward 1300, he had been a 
vassal of Thibaut and an intimate friend of Louis, and his memories 
went back to the France of Blanche's regency. Born in 1224, he must 
have seen in his youth the struggles of Thibaut against the enemies of 
Blanche, and in fact his memoirs contain Blanche's emphatic letter for- 
bidding Thibaut to marry Yolande of Brittany. He knew Pierre de 
Dreux well, and when they were captured by the Saracens at Damietta, 
and thrown into the hold of a galley, '' I had my feet right on the face 
of the Count Pierre de Bretagne, whose feet, in turn, were by my 
face." Joinville is almost twelfth-century in feeling. He was neither 
feminine nor sceptical, but simple. He showed no concern for poetry, 
but he put up a glass window to the Virgin. His religion belonged to 
the "Chanson de Roland." When Saint Louis, who had a pleasant 
sense of humour, put to him his favourite religious conundrums, Join- 
ville affected not the least hypocrisy. "Would you rather be a leper 
or commit a mortal sin?" asked the King. "I would rather commit 
thirty mortal sins than be a leper," answered Joinville. "Do you wash 
the feet of the poor on Holy Thursday?" asked the King. "God for- 
bid!" replied Joinville; "never will I wash the feet of such creatures!" 
Saint Louis mildly corrected his, or rather Thibaut's, seneschal, for 
these impieties, but he was no doubt used to them, for the soldier was 



254 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

never a churchman. If one asks Joinville what he thinks of the Virgin, 
he answers with the same frankness: — 

Ung jour moi estant devant le roi lui demanday congie d'aller en pelerinage a 
nostre Dame de Tourtouze [Tortosa in Syria] qui estoit ung veage tres fort requis. 
Et y avoit grant quantite de pelerins par chacun jour pour ce que c'est le premier 
autel qui onques fust fait en I'onneur de la Mere de Dieu ainsi qu'on disoit lors. 
Et y faisoit nostre Dame de grans miracles a merveilles. Entre lesquelz elle en 
fist ung d'un pouvre homme qui estoit hors de son sens et demoniacle. Car il 
avoit le maling esperit dedans le corps. Et advint par ung jour qu'il fut amene 
a icelui autel de nostre Dame de Tourtouze. Et ainsi que ses amys qui I'avoient 
la amene prioient a nostre Dame qu'elle lui voulsist recouvrer sante et guerison 
le diable que la pouvre creature avoit ou corps respondit: "Nostre Dame n'est 
pas ici ; elle est en Egipte pour aider au Roi de France et aux Chrestiens qui au- 
jourdhui arrivent en la Terre sainte centre toute paiennie qui sont a cheval." Et 
fut mis en escript le jour que le deable profera ces motz et fut apporte au legat 
qui estoit avecques le roi de France; lequel me dist depuis que a celui jour nous 
estion arrivez en la terre d' Egipte. Et suis bien certain que la bonne Dame Marie 
nous y eut bien besoin. 

This happened in Syria, after the total failure of the crusade in 
Egypt. The ordinary man, even if he were a priest or a soldier, needed 
a miraculous faith to persude him that Our Lady or any other divine 
power, had helped the crusades of Saint Louis. Few of the usual fic- 
tions on which society rested had ever required such defiance of facts ; 
but, at least for a time, society held firm. The thirteenth century could 
not afford to admit a doubt. Society had staked its existence, in this 
world and the next, on the reality and power of the Virgin ; it had in- 
vested in her care nearly its whole capital, spiritual, artistic, intellec- 
tual, and economical, even to the bulk of its real and personal estate; 
. and her overthrow would have been the most appalling disaster the 
Western world had ever known. Without her, the Trinity itself could 
not stand ; the Church must fall ; the future world must dissolve. Not 
even the collapse of the Roman Empire compared with a calamity so 
serious; for that had created, not destroyed, a faith. 

If sceptics there were, they kept silence. Men disputed and doubted 
about the Trinity, but about the Virgin the satirists Rutebeuf and 



LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME 255 

Adam de la Halle wrote in the same spirit as Saint Bernard and Abe- 
lard, Adam de Saint- Victor and the pious monk Gaul tier de Coincy. 
In the midst of violent disputes on other points of doctrine, the dis- 
putants united in devotion to Mary; and it was the single redeeming 
quality about them. The monarchs believed almost more implicitly 
than their subjects, and maintained the belief to the last. Doubtless 
the death of Queen Blanche marked the flood-tide at its height; but 
an authority so established as that of the Virgin, founded on instincts 
so deep, logic so rigorous, and, above all, on wealth so vast, declined 
slowly. Saint Louis died in 1270. Two hundred long and dismal years 
followed, in the midst of wars, decline of faith, dissolution of the old 
ties and interests, until, toward 1470, Louis XI succeeded in restoring 
some semblance of solidity to the State ; and Louis XI divided his time 
and his money impartially between the Virgin of Chartres and the 
Virgin of Paris. In that respect, one can see no difference between him 
and Saint Louis, nor much between Philippe de Commines and Join- 
ville. After Louis XI, another fantastic century passed, filled with the 
foulest horrors of history — religious wars; aSvSassinations ; Saint Bar- 
tholomews; sieges of Chartres; Huguenot leagues and sweeping destruc- 
tion of religious monuments ; Catholic leagues and fanatical reprisals on 
friends and foes, — the actual dissolution of society in a mass of horrors 
compared with which even the Albigensian crusade was a local accident, 
all ending in the reign of the last Valois, Henry III, the weirdest, most 
fascinating, most repulsive, most pathetic and most pitiable of the whole 
picturesque series of French kings. If you look into the Journal of Pierre 
de I'Estoile, under date of January 26, 1582, you can read the entry: — 

The King and the Queen [Louise de Lorraine], separately, and each accom- 
panied by a good troop [of companions] went on foot from Paris to Chartres on 
a pilgrimage [voyage] to Notre-Dame-de-dessous-Terre [Our Lady of the Crypt], 
where a neuvaine was celebrated at the last mass at which the King and Queen 
assisted, and offered a silver-gilt statue of Notre Dame which weighed a hundred 
marks [eight hundred ounces], with the object of having lineage which might suc- 
ceed to the throne. 



256 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

In the dead of winter, in robes of penitents, over the roughest roads, 
on foot, the King and Queen, then seven years married, walked fifty 
miles to Chartres to supplicate the Virgin for children, and back again; 
and this they did year after year until Jacques Clement put an end to 
it with his dagger, in 1589, although the Virgin never chose to per- 
form that miracle; but, instead, allowed the House of Valois to die out 
and sat on her throne in patience while the House of Bourbon was 
anointed in their place. The only French King ever crowned in the 
presence of Our Lady of Chartres was Henry IV — a heretic. 

The year 1589, which was so decisive for Henry IV in France, marked 
in England the rise of Shakespeare as a sort of stage-monarch. While 
in France the Virgin still held such power that kings and queens asked 
her for favours, almost as instinctively as they had done five hundred 
years before, in England Shakespeare set all human nature and all 
human history on the stage, with hardly an allusion to the Virgin's 
name, unless as an oath. The exceptions are worth noting as a matter 
of curious Shakespearean criticism, for they are but two, and both are 
lines in the "First Part of Henry VI," spoken by the Maid of Or- 
leans: — 

Christ's mother helps me, else I were too weak! 

Whether the "First Part of Henry VI " was written by Shakespeare at 
all has been a doubt much discussed, and too deep for tourists; but 
that this line was written by a Roman Catholic is the more likely be- 
cause no such religious thought recurs in all the rest of Shakespeare's 
works, dramatic or lyric, unless it is implied in Gaunt 's allusion to "the 
world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son." Thus, while three hundred years 
caused in England the disappearance of the great divinity on whom the 
twelfth and thirteenth centuries had lavished all their hopes, and during 
these three centuries every earthly throne had been repeatedly shaken 
or shattered, the Church had been broken in halves, faith had been lost, 
and philosophies overthrown, the Virgin still remained and remains the 



LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME 257 

most Intensely and the most widely and the most personally felt, of 
all characters, divine or human or imaginary, that ever existed among 
men. Nothing has even remotely taken her place. The only possible 
exception is the Buddha, Sakya Muni; but to the Western mind, a 
figure like the Buddha stood much farther away than the Virgin. That 
of the Christ even to Saint Bernard stood not so near as that of his 
mother. Abelard expressed the fact in its logical necessity even more 
strongly than Saint Bernard did: — 

Te requirunt vota fidelium, 
Ad te corda suspirant omnium, 
Tu spes nostra post Deum unica, 
Advocata nobis es posita. 
Ad judicis matrem confugiunt, 
Qui judicis iram effugiunt, 
Quae praecari pro eis cogitur, 
Quae pro reis mater efi&citur. 

"After the Trinity, you are our only hope"; spes nostra unica; "you 
are placed there as our advocate ; all of us who fear the wrath of the 
Judge, fly to the Judge's mother, who is logically compelled to sue for 
us, and stands in the place of a mother to the guilty." Ab61ard's logic 
was always ruthless, and the "cogitur" is a stronger word than one 
would like to use now, with a priest in hearing. We need not insist on 
it; but what one must insist on, is the good faith of the whole people, 
— kings, queens, princes of all sorts, philosophers, poets, soldiers, ar- 
tists, as well as of the commoners like ourselves, and the poor, — for 
the good faith of the priests is not important to the understanding, 
since any class which is sufficiently interested in believing will always 
believe. In order to feel Gothic architecture in the twelfth and thir- 
teenth centuries, one must feel first and last, around and above and 
beneath it, the good faith of the public, excepting only Jews and athe- 
ists, permeating every portion of it with the conviction of an imme- 
diate alternative between heaven and hell, with Mary as the only 
court in equity capable of overruling strict law. 
The Virgin was a real person, whose tastes, wishes, instincts. 



258 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

passions, were intimately known. Enough of the Virgin's literature 
survives to show her character, and the course of her daily life. We 
know more about her habits and thoughts than about those of earthly 
queens. The "Miracles de la Vierge" make a large part, and not the 
poorest part, of the enormous literature of these two centuries, al- 
though the works of Albertus Magnus fill twenty-one folio volumes 
and those of Thomas Aquinas fill more, while the " Chansons de Geste" 
and the "Romans," published or unpublished, are a special branch of 
literature with libraries to themselves. The collection of the Virgin's 
miracles put in verse by Gaultier de Coincy, monk, prior, and poet, be- 
tween 1 2 14 and 1233, — the precise moment of the Chartres sculpture 
and glass, — contains thirty thousand lines. Another great collection, 
narrating especially the miracles of the Virgin of Chartres, was made 
by a priest of Chartres Cathedral about 1240. Separate series, or single 
tales, have appeared and are appearing constantly, but no general col- 
lection has ever been made, although the whole poetic literature of the 
Virgin could be printed in the space of two or three volumes of scho- 
lastic philosophy, and if the Church had cared half as truly for the Virgin 
as it has for Thomas Aquinas, every miracle might have been collected 
and published a score of times. The miracles themselves, indeed, are 
not very numerous. In Gaultier de Coincy's collection they number 
only about fifty. The Chartres collection relates chiefly to the horrible 
outbreak of what was called leprosy — the "mal ardent," — which 
ravaged the north of France during the crusades, and added intensity 
to the feelings which brought all society to the Virgin's feet. Recent 
scholars are cataloguing and classifying the miracles, as far as they 
survive, and have reduced the number within very moderate limits. 
As poetry Gaultier de Coincy's are the best. 

Of Gaultier de Coincy and his poetry, Gaston Paris has something 
to say which is worth quoting : — 

It is the most curious, and often the most singular monument of the infantile 
piety of the Middle Ages. Devotion to Mary is presented in it as a kind of infal- 



LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME 259 

lible guarantee not only against every sort of evil, but also against the most legiti- 
mate consequences of sin and even of crime. In these stories which have revolted 
the most rational piety, as well as the philosophy of modern times, one must still 
admit a gentle and penetrating charm ; a naiivet6 ; a tenderness and a simplicity of 
heart, which touch, while they raise a smile. There, for instance, one sees a sick 
monk cured by the milk that Our Lady herself comes to invite him to draw from 
her "douce mamelle"; a robber who is in the habit of recommending himself to 
the Virgin whenever he is going to "embler," is held up by her white hands for 
three days on the gibbet where he is hung, until the miracle becomes evident, 
and procures his pardon; an ignorant monk who knows only his Ave Maria, and is 
despised on that account, when dead reveals his sanctity by five roses which come 
out of his mouth in honour of the five letters of the name Maria ; a nun, who has 
quitted her convent to lead a life of sin, returns after long years, and finds that the 
Holy Virgin, to whom, in spite of all, she has never ceased to offer every day her 
prayer, has, during all this time, filled her place as sacristine, so that no one has 
perceived her absence. 

Gaston Paris inclined to apologize to his "bons bourgeois de Paris" 
for reintroducing to them a character so doubtful as the Virgin Mary, 
but, for our studies, the professor's elementary morality is eloquent. 
Clearly, M. Paris, the highest academic authority In the world, 
thought that the Virgin could hardly, In his time, say the year 1900, 
be received Into good society In the Latin Quarter. Our own English 
ancestors, known as Puritans, held the same opinion, and excluded her 
from their society some four hundred years earlier, for the same reasons 
which affected M. Gaston Paris. These reasons were just, and showed 
the respectability of the citizens who held them. In no well-regulated 
community, under a proper system of police, could the Virgin feel at 
home, and the same thing may be said of most other saints as well as 
sinners. Her conduct was at times undignified, as M. Paris complained. 
She condescended to do domestic service, In order to help her friends, 
and she would use her needle, If she were In the mood, for the same 
object. The "Golden Legend " relates that: — 

A certain priest, who celebrated every day a mass in honour of the Holy 
Virgin, was brought up before Saint Thomas of Canterbury who suspended him 
from his charge, judging him to be short- witted and irresponsible. Now Saint 



260 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

Thomas had occasion to mend his hair-cloth shirt, and while waiting for an oppor- 
tunity to do so, had hidden it under his bed ; so the Virgin appeared to the priest 
and said to him: "Go find the archbishop and tell him that she, for love of whom 
you celebrated masses, has herself mended his shirt for him which is under his 
bed; and tell him that she sends you to him that he may take off the interdict he 
has imposed on you." And Saint Thomas found that his shirt had in fact been 
mended. He relieved the priest, begging him to keep the secret of his wearing a 
hair-shirt. 

Mary did some exceedingly unconventional things, and among them 
the darning Thomas A'Becket's hair-shirt, and the supporting a robber 
on the gibbet, were not the most singular, yet they seem not to have 
shocked Queen Blanche or Saint Francis or Saint Thomas Aquinas so 
much as they shocked M. Gaston Paris and M. Prudhomme. You have 
still to visit the cathedral at Le Mans for the sake of its twelfth-cen- 
tury glass, and there, in the lower panel of the beautiful, and very 
early, window of Saint Protais, you will see the full-length figure of a 
man, lying in bed, under a handsome blanket, watching, with staring 
eyes, the Virgin, in a green tunic, wearing her royal crown, who is 
striking him on the head with a heavy hammer and with both hands. 
The miracle belongs to local history, and is amusing only to show 
how little the Virgin cared for criticism of her manners or acts. She was 
above criticism. She made manners. Her acts were laws. No one 
thought of criticizing, in the style of a normal school, the will of such 
a queen ; but one might treat her with a degree of familiarity, under 
great provocation, which would startle easier critics than the French. 
Here is an instance : — 

A widow had an only child whom she tenderly loved. On hearing that this son 
had been taken by the enemy, chained, and put in prison, she burst into tears, and 
addressing herself to the Virgin, to whom she was especially devoted, she asked 
her with obstinacy for the release of her son; but when she saw at last that her 
prayers remained unanswered, she went to the church where there was a sculp- 
tured image of Mary, and there, before the image, she said: "Holy Virgin, I have 
begged you to deliver my son, and you have not been willing to help an unhappy 
mother! I 've implored your patronage for my son, and you have refused it! Very 
good ! just as my son has been taken away from me, so I am going to take away 



LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME 261 

yours, and keep him as a hostage!" Saying this, she approached, took the statue 
child on the Virgin's breast, carried it home, wrapped it in spotless linen, and 
locked it up in a box, happy to have such a hostage for her son's return. Now, 
the following night, the Virgin appeared to the young man, opened his prison 
doors, and said: "Tell your mother, my child, to return me my Son now that I 
have returned hers!" The young man came home to his mother and told her of 
his miraculous deliverance; and she, overjoyed, hastened to go with the little 
Jesus to the Virgin, saying to her: " I thank you, heavenly lady, for restoring me 
my child, and in return I restore yours!" 

For the exactness of this story in all its details, Bishop James of 
Voragio could not have vouched, nor did it greatly matter. What he 
could vouch for was the relation of intimacy and confidence between 
his people and the Queen of Heaven. The fact, conspicuous above all 
other historical certainties about religion, that the Virgin was by es- 
sence illogical, unreasonable and feminine, is the only fact of any ulti- 
mate value worth studying, and starts a number of questions that his- 
tory has shown itself clearly afraid to touch. Protestant and Catholic 
differ little in that respect. No one has ventured to explain why the 
Virgin wielded exclusive power over poor and rich, sinners and saints, 
alike. Why were all the Protestant churches cold failures without her 
help? Why could not the Holy Ghost — the spirit of Love and Grace 

— equally answer their prayers? Why was the Son powerless? Why was 
Chartres Cathedral in the thirteenth century — like Lourdes to-day 

— the expression of what is in substance a separate religion? Why did 
the gentle and gracious Virgin Mother so exasperate the Pilgrim 
Father? Why was the Woman struck out of the Church and ignored in 
the State? These questions are not antiquarian or trifling in historical 
value; they tug at the very heart-strings of all that makes whatever 
order is in the cosmos. If a Unity exists, in which and toward which all 
energies centre, it must explain and include Duality, Diversity, In- 
finity — Sex I 

Although certain to be contradicted by every pious churchman, a 
heretic must insist on thinking that the Mater Dolorosa was the logical 
Virgin of the Church, and that the Trinity would never have raised 



262 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

her from the foot of the Cross, had not the Virgin of Majesty been 
imposed, by necessity and pubHc unanimity, on a creed which was 
meant to be complete without her. The true feehng of the Church was 
best expressed by the Virgin herself in one of her attested miracles: 
"A clerk, trusting more in the Mother than in the Son, never stopped 
repeating the angelic salutation for his only prayer. Once as he said 
again the 'Ave Maria,' the Lord appeared to him, and said to him: 
' My Mother thanks you much for all the Salutations that you make 
her; but still you should not forget to salute me also: tamen et me 
salutare memento.'" The Trinity feared absorption in her, but was 
compelled to accept, and even to invite her aid, because the Trinity 
was a court of strict law, and, as in the old customary law, no process 
of equity could be introduced except by direct appeal to a higher 
power. She was imposed unanimously by all classes, because what 
man wanted most in the Middle Ages was not merely law or equity, 

, but also and particularly favour. Strict justice, either on earth or in 
heaven, was the last thing that society cared to face. All men were 
sinners, and had, at least, the merit of feeling that, if they got their 
deserts, not one would escape worse than whipping. The instinct of 
individuality went down through all classes, from the count at the top, 
to the jugleors and menestreus at the bottom. The individual rebelled 
against restraint ; society wanted to do what it pleased ; all disliked 
the laws which Church and State were trying to fasten on them. They 
longed for a power above law, — or above the contorted mass of ig- 
norance and absurdity bearing the name of law; but the power which 

V they longed for was not human, for humanity they knew to be cor- 
rupt and incompetent from the day of Adam's creation to the day of 
the Last Judgment. They were all criminals; if not, they would have 
had no use for the Church and very little for the State; but they had 
at least the merit of their faults; they knew what they were, and, like 
children, they yearned for protection, pardon, and love. This was 
what the Trinity, though omnipotent, could not give. Whatever the 



LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME 



263 



heretic or mystic might try to persuade himself, God could not be Love. 
God was Justice, Order, Unity, Perfection; He could not be human 
and imperfect, nor could the Son or the Holy Ghost be other than the 
Father. The Mother alone was human, imperfect, and could love; she 
alone was Favour, Duality, Diversity. Under any conceivable form 
of religion, this duality must find embodiment somewhere, and the 
Middle Ages logically insisted that, as it could not be in the Trinity, 
either separately or together, it must be in the Mother. If the Trinity 
was in its essence Unity, the Mother alone could represent whatever 
was not Unity; whatever was irregular, exceptional, outlawed; and this 
was the whole human race. The saints alone were safe, after they were 
sainted. Every one else was criminal, and men differed so little in de- 
gree of sin that, in Mary's eyes, all were subjects for her pity and help. 
This general rule of favour, apart from law, or the reverse of law, 
was the mark of Mary's activity in human affairs. Take, for an ex- 
ample, an entire class of her miracles, applying to the discipline of the 
Church! A bishop ejected an ignorant and corrupt priest from his 
living, as all bishops constantly had to do. The priest had taken the 
precaution to make himself Mary's man; he had devoted himself to her 
service and her worship. Mary instantly interfered, — just as Queen 
Eleanor or Queen Blanche would have done, — most unreasonably, 
and never was a poor bishop more roughly scolded by an orthodox 
queen! "Moult airieement," very airily or angrily, she said to him 
(Bartsch, 1887, p. 363): — 



Ce saches tu certainement 
Se tu li matinet Men main 
Ne rapeles mon chapelain 
A son servise et a s'enor, 
L'ame de toi a desenor 
Ains trente jors departira 
Et es dolors d'infer ira. 



Now know you this for sure and true, 
Unless to-morrow this you do, 
— And do it very early too, — 
Restore my chaplain to his due, 
A much worse fate remains for you! 
Within a month your soul shall go 
To suffer in the flames below. 



The story-teller — himself a priest and prior — caught the lofty 
trick of manner which belonged to the great ladies of the court, and 



264 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

was inherited by them, even in England, down to the time of Queen 

Elizabeth, who treated her bishops also like domestic servants; — 

"matinet bien main! " To the public, as to us, the justice of the rebuke 

was nothing to the point; but that a friend should exist on earth or in 

heaven, who dared to browbeat a bishop, caused the keenest personal 

delight. The legends are clearer on this point than on any other. The 

people loved Mary because she trampled on conventions; not merely 

because she could do it, but because she liked to do what shocked every 

well-regulated authority. Her pity had no limit. , 

One of the Chartres miracles expresses the same motive in language 

almost plainer still. A good-for-nothing clerk, vicious, proud, vain, 

rude, and altogether worthless, but devoted to the Virgin, died, and 

with general approval his body was thrown into a ditch (Bartsch, 

1887, p. 369): — 

Mais cele ou sort tote pities 
Tote douceurs tote amisties 
Et qui les siens onques n'oublie 
Son pecheor n'oblia mie. 

"Her sinner!" Mary would not have been a true queen unless she 
had protected her own. The whole morality of the Middle Ages stood 
in the obligation of every master to protect his dependent. The herds- 
men of Count Garin of Beaucaire were the superiors of their damoiseau 
Aucassins, while they felt sure of the Count. Mary was the highest of 
all the feudal ladies, and was the example for all in loyalty to her own, 
when she had to humiliate her own Bishop of Chartres for the sake of 
a worthless brute. "Do you suppose it does n't annoy me, ' ' she said, 
"to see my friend buried in a common ditch? Take him out at onc^! 
I command ! tell the clergy it is my order, and that I will never forgive 
them unless to-morrow morning without delay, they bury my friend 
in the best place in the cemetery!": — 

Cuidies vos done qu'il ne m'enuit 
Quant vos I'aves si adosse 
Que mis I'aves en un fosse? 



LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME 265 

Metes I'en fors je le comant! 

Di le clergie que je li mant! 

Ne me puet mi repaier 

Se le matin sans delayer 

A grant heneur n'est mis amis 

Ou plus beau leu de I'aitre mis. 

Naturally, her order was instantly obeyed. In the feudal regime, 
disobedience to an order was treason — or even hesitation to obey — 
when the order was serious; very much as in a modern army, disobedi- 
ence is not regarded as conceivable. Mary's wish was absolute law, 
on earth as in heaven. For her, other laws were not made. Intensely 
human, but always Queen, she upset, at her pleasure, the decisions of 
every court and the orders of every authority, human or divine ; inter- 
fered directly in the ordeal; altered the processes of nature; abolished 
space; annihilated time. Like other queens, she had many of the fail- 
ings and prejudices of her humanity. In spite of her own origin, she 
disliked Jews, and rarely neglected a chance to maltreat them. She was 
not in the least a prude. To her, sin was simply humanity, and she 
seemed often on the point of defending her arbitrary acts of mercy, 
by frankly telling the Trinity that if the Creator meant to punish man. 
He should not have made him. The people, who always in their hearts 
protested against bearing the responsibility for the Creator's arbitrary 
creations, delighted to see her upset the law, and reverse the rulings of 
the Trinity. They idolized her for being strong, physically and In will, 
so that she feared nothing, and was as helpful to the knight in the 
m^lee of battle as to- the young mother in child-bed. The only char- 
acter In which they seemed slow to recognize Mary was that of bour- 
geolse. The bourgeoisie courted her favour at great expense, but she 
seemed to be at home on the farm, rather than in the shop. She had 
very rudimentary knowledge, indeed, of the principles of political econ- 
omy as we understand them, and her views on the subject of money- 
lending or banking were so feminine as to rouse in that powerful class 
a vindictive enmity which helped to overthrow her throne. On the 



266 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES' 



other hand, she showed a marked weakness for chivalry, and one of her 
prettiest and most twelfth-century miracles is that of the knight who 
heard mass while Mary took his place in the lists. It is much too 
charming to lose (Bartsch, 1895, p. 311): — 



Un chevalier courtois et sages, 

Hardis et de grant vasselages, 

Nus mieudres en chevalerie, ' ; 

Moult amoit la vierge Marie. 

Pour son barnage demener 

Et son franc cors d'armes pener, 

Aloit a son tournoiement 

Garnis de son contentement. 

Au dieu plaisir ainsi avint 

Que quant le jour du tournoi vint 

II se hastoit de chevauchier, 

Bien vousist estre en champ premier. 

D'une eglise qui pres estoit 

Oi les sains que Ton sonnoit 

Pour la sainte messe chanter. 

Le chevalier sans arrester 

S'en est ale droit a I'eglise 

Pour escouter le dieu servise. 

L'en chantoit tantost hautement 

Une messe devotement 

De la sainte Vierge Marie; 

Puis a on autre comencie. 

Le chevaHer vien I'escouta, 

De bon cuer la dame pria, 

Et quant la messe fut finee 

La tierce fu recomenciee 

Tantost en ce meisme lieu. 

"Sire, pour la sainte char dieu!" 

Ce li a dit son escuier, 

"L'heure passe de tournoier, 

Et vous que demourez ici? 

Venez vous en, je vous en pri! 

Volez vous devenir hermite 

Ou papelart ou ypocrite? 

Alons en a nostra mestier!" 



A knight both courteous and wise 
And brave and bold in enterprise. 
No better knight was ever seen, 
Greatly loved the Virgin Queen. 
Once, to contest the tourney's prize 
And keep his strength in exercise, 
He rode out to the listed field 
Armed at all points with lance and shield; 
But it pleased God that when the day 
Of tourney came, and on his way 
He pressed his charger's speed apace 
To reach, before his friends, the place. 
He saw a church hard by the road 
And heard the church-bells sounding loud 
To celebrate the holy mass. 
Without a thought the church to pass 
The knight drew rein, and entered there 
To seek the aid of God in prayer. 

High and clear they chanted then 

A solemn mass to Mary Queen; 

Then afresh began again. 

Lost in his prayers the good knight stayed; 

With all his heart to Mary prayed; 

And, when the second one was done. 

Straightway the third mass was begxm, 

Right there upon the self -same place. 

"Sire, for mercy of God's grace!" 

Whispered his squire in his ear; 

" The hour of tournament is near; 

Why do you want to linger here? 

Is it a hermit to become. 

Or hypocrite, or priest of Rome? 

Come on, at once! despatch your prayer! 

Let us be off to our affair!" 



The accent of truth still lingers in this remonstrance of the squire, 
who must, from all time, have lost his temper on finding his chevalier 
addicted to "papelardie" when he should have been fighting; but the 



LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME 267 

priest had the advantage of telling the story and pointing the moral. 
This advantage the priest neglected rarely, but in this case he used it 
with such refinement and so much literary skill that even the squire 
might have been patient. With the invariable gentle courtesy of the 
true knight, the chevalier replied only by soft words : — 

"Amis!" ce dist li chevalier, 
" Cil tovirnoie moult noblement 
Qui le servise dieu entent. " 

In one of Milton's sonnets is a famous line which is commonly 
classed among the noblest verses of the English language : — 

"They also serve, who only stand and wait." 

Fine as it is, with the simplicity of the grand style, like the ''Chanson 
de Roland" the verse of Milton does not quite destroy the charm of 
thirteenth-century diction : — 

"Friend!" said to him the chevalier, 
"He tourneys very nobly too, 
Who only hears God's service through!" 

No doubt the verses lack the singular power of the eleventh century; it 
is not worth while to pretend that any verse written in the thirteenth 
century wholly holds its own against "Roland": — 

"Sire cimipain! faites le vus de gred? 
Ja est CO RoUanz ki tant vos soelt amer!" 

The courtesy of Roland has the serious solidity of the Romanesque 
arch, and that of Lancelot and Aucassins has the grace of a legendary 
window; but one may love it, all the same; and one may even love the 
knight, — papelard though he were, — as he turned back to the altar 
and remained in prayer until the last mass was ended. 

Then they mounted and rode on toward the field, and of course 
you foresee what had happened. In itself the story is bald enough, but 
it is told with such skill that one never tires of it. As the chevalier 
and the squire approached the lists, they met the other knights return- 
ing, for the jousts were over; but, to the astonishment of the chevalier, 



268 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



he was greeted by all who passed him with shouts of applause for his 
marvellous triumph in the lists, where he had taken all the prizes and 
all the prisoners: — 



Les chevaliers ont encontrez, 
Qui du tournois sont retournes, 
Qui du tout en tout est feru. 
S'en avoit tout le pris eu 
Le chevalier qui reperoit 
Des messes qu' oies avoit. 
Les autres qui s'en reperoient 
Le saluent et le conjoient 
Et distrent bien que onques mes 
Nul chevalier ne prist tel fes 
D'armes com il ot fet ce jour; 
A tousjours en avroit I'onnour. 
Moult en i ot qui se rendoient 
A lui prisonier, et disoient 
"Nous somes vostre prisonier, 
Ne nous ne pourrions nier, 
Ne nous aliz par armes pris." 
Lors ne fu plus cil esbahis, 
Car il a entendu tantost 
Que cele fu pour lui en I'ost 
Pour qui il fu en la chapelle. 



His friends, returning from the fight, 
On the way there met the knight, 
For the jousts were wholly run, 
And all the prizes had been won 
By the knight who had not stirred 
From the masses he had heard. 
All the knights, as they came by, 
Saluted him and gave him joy. 
And frankly said that never yet 
Had any knight performed such feat. 
Nor ever honour won so great 
As he had done in arms that day; 
While many of them stopped to say 
That they all his prisoners were: 
"In truth, your prisoners we are: 
We cannot but admit it true: 
Taken we were in arms by you!" 
Then the truth dawned on him there. 

And all at once he saw the light, 
That She, by whom he stood in prayer, 

— The Virgin, — stood by him in fight ! 



The moral of the tale belongs to the best feudal times. The knight 
at once recognized that he had become the liege-man of the Queen, 
and henceforth must render his service entirely to her. So he called his 
"barons," or tenants, together, and after telling them what had hap- 
pened, took leave of them and the "siecle": — 



" Moult est ciest tournoiement biaux 

Ou ele a pour moi tournoie; 

Mes trop I'avroit mal emploie 

Se pour lui je ne tournoioie! 

Fox seroie se retoumoie 

A la mondaine vanite. 

A dieu promet en verite 

Que James ne tournoierai 

Fors devant le juge verai 

Qui conoit le bon chevalier 

Et selonc le fet set jutgier." 



" Glorious has the tourney been 

Where for me has fought the Queen; 

But a disgrace for me it were 

If I tourneyed not for her. 

Traitor to her should I be, 

Returned to worldly vanity. 

I promise truly, by God's grace. 

Never again the lists to see. 

Except before that Judge's face, 

Who knows the true knight from the base, 

And gives to each his final place." 



LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME 



269 



Lors prent congie piteusement, 
Et maint en plorent tenrement. 
D'euls se part, en une abaie 
Servi puis la vierge Marie. 



Then piteously he takes his leave 
While in tears his barons grieve. 
So he parts, and in an abbey 
Serves henceforth the Virgin Mary. 



Observe that in this case Mary exacted no service! Usually the 
legends are told, as in this instance, by priests, though they were told in 
the same spirit by laymen, as you can see in the poems of Rutebeuf, 
and they would not have been told very differently by soldiers, if one 
may judge from Joinville; but commonly the Virgin herself prescribed 
the kind of service she wished. Especially to the young knight who 
had, of his own accord, chosen her for his liege, she showed herself 
as exacting as other great ladies showed themselves toward their 
Lancelots and Tristans. When she chose, she could even indulge in 
more or less coquetry, else she could never have appealed to the sym- 
pathies of the thirteenth-century knight-errant. One of her miracles 
told how she disciplined the young men who were too much in the 
habit of assuming her service in order to obtain selfish objects. A 
youthful chevalier, much given to tournaments and the other worldly 
diversions of the si^cle, fell in love, after the rigorous obligation of his 
class, as you know from your Dulcinea del Toboso, with a lady who, as 
was also prescribed by the rules of courteous love, declined to listen to 
him. An abbot of his acquaintance, sympathizing with his distress, 
suggested to him the happy idea of appealing for help to the Queen 
of Heaven. He followed the advice, and for an entire year shut him- 
self up, and prayed to Mary, in her chapel, that she would soften the 
heart of his beloved, and bring her to listen to his prayer. At the end 
of the twelvemonth, fixed as a natural and sufficient proof of his ear- 
nestness in devotion, he felt himself entitled to indulge again in inno- 
cent worldly pleasures, and on the first morning after his release, he 
started out on horseback for a day's hunting. Probably thousands of 
young knights and squires were always doing more or less the same 
thing, and it was quite usual that, as they rode through the fields or 



270 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



forests, they should happen on a solitary chapel or shrine, as this 
knight did. He stopped long enough to kneel in it and renew his 
prayer to the Queen : — 



La mere dieu qui maint chetif 
A retrait de chetivete 
Par sa grant debonnairte 
Par sa courtoise courtoisie 
Au las qui tant I'apele et prie 
Ignelement s'est demonstree, 
D'une coronne corronnee 
Plaine de pierres precieuses 
Si flamboianz si precieuses 
Pour pou li euil ne li esluisent. 
Si netement ainsi reluisent 
Et resplendissent com la raie 
Qui en este au matin raie. 
Tant par a bel et cler le vis 
Que buer fu mez, ce li est vis, 
Qui s'i puest assez mirer. 
" Cele qui te fait soupirer 
Et en si grant erreur t'a mis," 
Fait nostre dame, " biau douz amis, 
Est ele plus bele que moi? " 
Li chevaliers a tel effroi 
De la clarte, ne sai que face; 
Ses mains giete devant sa face; 
Tel hide a et tel freeur 
Chaoir se laisse de freeur; 
Mais cele en qui pitie est toute 
Li dist: "Amis, or n'aies doute! 
Je sms cele, n'en doute mie. 
Qui te doi faire avoir t'amie. 
Or prens garde que tu feras. 
Cele que tu miex ameras 
De nous ii auras a amie." 



God's Mother who to many a wretch 
Has brought relief from wretchedness. 
By her infinite goodness. 
By her courteous courteousness, 
To her suppliant in distress 
Came from heaven quickly down; 
On her head she bore the crown, 
Fvill of precious stones and gems 
Darting splendour, flashing flames, 
Till the eye near lost its sight 
In the keenness of the light. 
As the summer morning's sun 
Blinds the eyes it shines upon. 
So beautiful and bright her face, 
Only to look on her is grace. 

" She who has caused you thus to sigh. 
And has brought you to this end," — 
Said Our Lady, — "Tell me, friend. 
Is she handsomer than I?" 
Scared by her brilliancy, the knight 
Knows not what to do for fright; 
He clasps his hands before his face. 
And in his shame and his disgrace 
Falls prostrate on the ground with fear; 
But she with pity ever near 
Tells him: — "Friend, be not afraid! 
Doubt not that I am she whose aid 
Shall surely bring your love to you; 
But take good care what you shall do! 
She you shall love most faithfully 
Of us two, shall your mistress be." 



One is at a loss to imagine what a young gentleman could do, in 
such a situation, except to obey, with the fewest words possible, the 
suggestion so gracefully intended. Queen's favours might be fatal 
gifts, but they were much more fatal to reject than to accept. What- 
ever might be the preferences of the knight, he had invited his own fate, 



LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME 



271 



and in consequence was fortunate to be allowed the option of dying 
and going to heaven, or dying without going to heaven. Mary was 
not always so gentle with young men who deserted or neglected her 
for an earthly rival ; — the offence which irritated her most, and occa- 
sionally caused her to use language which hardly bears translation 
into modern English. Without meaning to assert that the Queen 
of Heaven was jealous as Queen Blanche herself, one must still 
admit that she was very severe on lovers who showed willingness to 
leave her service, and take service with any other lady. One of her 
admirers, educated for the priesthood but not yet in full orders, was 
obliged by reasons of family interest to quit his career in order to 
marry. An insult like this was more than Mary could endure, and she 
gave the young man a lesson he never forgot : — 



Ireement li prent a dire 
La mere au roi de paradis : 
"Di moi, di moi, tu que jadis 
M'amoies tant de tout ton coeur. 
Pourquoi m'as tu jete puer? 
pi moi, di moi, ou est done cele 
Qui plus de moi bone est et bele? . . 
Pourquoi, pourquoi, las durfeus, 
Las engignez, las deceuz, 
Me lais pour une lasse fame, 
Qui suis du ciel Royne et Dame? 
Enne fais tu trop mauvais change 
Qui tu por une fame estrange 
Me laisses qui par amors t'amoie 
Et ja ou ciel t'apareilloie 
En mes chambres un riche lit 
Por couchier t'ame a grand delit? ' 
Trop par as faites grant merveilles 
S'autrement tost ne te conseilles 
Ou ciel serra tes lits deffais 
Et en la flamme d'enfer faiz!" 



With anger flashing in her eyes 
Answers the Queen of Paradise: 
"Tell me, tell me! you of old 
Loved me once with love untold; 
Why now throw me aside? 
Tell me, tell me! where a bride 
Kinder or fairer have you won? . . . 
Wherefore, wherefore, wretched one, 
Deceived, betrayed, misled, undone, 
Leave me for a creature mean. 
Me, who am of Heaven the Queen? 
Can you make a worse exchange, 
You that for a woman strange, 
Leave me who, with perfect love, 
Waiting you in heaven above. 
Had in my chamber richly dressed 
A bed of bliss your soul to rest? 
Terrible is your mistake! 
Unless you better council take, 
In heaven your bed shall be unmade. 
And in the flames of hell be spread." 



A mistress who loved in this manner was not to be gainsaid. No 
earthly love had a chance of holding its own against this unfair com- 
bination of heaven and hell, and Mary was as unscrupulous as any other 



2'j2 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

great lady in abusing all her advantages in order to save her souls. 
Frenchmen never found fault with abuses of power for what they 
thought a serious object. The more tyrannical Mary was, the more her 
adorers adored, and they wholly approved, both in love and in law, the 
rule that any man who changed his allegiance without permission, did 
so at his own peril. His life and property were forfeit. Mary showed 
him too much grace in giving him an option. 

Even in anger Mary always remained a great lady, and in the 
ordinary relations of society her manners were exquisite, as they were, 
according to Joinville, in the court of Saint Louis, when tempers were 
not overwrought. The very brutality of the brutal compelled the 
courteous to exaggerate courtesy, and some of the royal family were as 
coarse as the king was delicate in manners. In heaven the manners 
were perfect, and almost as stately as those of Roland and Oliver. On 
one occasion Saint Peter found himself embarrassed by an affair which 
the public opinion of the Court of Heaven, although not by any means 
puritanic, thought more objectionable — in fact, more frankly dis- 
creditable — than an honest corrupt job ought to be; and even his in- 
fluence, though certainly considerable, wholly failed to carry it through 
the law-court. The case, as reported by Gaultier de Coincy, was this: 
A very worthless creature of Saint Peter's, — a monk of Cologne, — 
who had led a scandalous life, and "ne cremoit dieu, ordre ne roule," 
died, and in due course of law was tried, convicted, and dragged off by 
the devils to undergo his term of punishment. Saint Peter could not 
desert his sinner, though much ashamed of him, and accordingly made 
formal application to the Trinity for a pardon. The Trinity, somewhat 
severely, refused. Finding his own interest insufficient, Saint Peter 
tried to strengthen it by asking the archangels to help him ; but the 
case was too much for them also, and they declined. The brother 
apostles were appealed to, with the same result; and finally even the 
saints, though they had so obvious interest in keeping friendly relations 
with Peter, found public opinion too strong to defy. The case was 



LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME 



273 



desperate. The Trinity were — or was — emphatic, and — what was 
rare In the Middle Ages — every member of the feudal hierarchy sus- 
tained its decision. Nothing more could be done in the regular way. 
Saint Peter was obliged to divest himself of authority, and place him- 
self and his dignity in the hands of the Virgin. Accordingly he asked 
for an audience, and stated the case to Our Lady. With the utmost 
grace, she instantly responded : — 



" Pierre, Pierre," dit Nostre Dame, 

" En moult grand poine et por ceste ame 

De mon douz filz me fierai 

Tant que pour toi Ten prierai." 

La Mere Dieu lors s'est levee, 

Devant son filz s'en est alee 

Et ses virges toutes apres. ^ 

De lui si tint Pierre pres, 

Quar sanz doutance bien savoit 

Que sa besoigne faite avoit 

Puisque cele I'avoit en prise 

Ou forme himiaine avoit prise. 

Quant sa Mere vit li douz Sire 
Qui de son doit daigna escrire 
Qu'en honourant et pere et mere 
En contre lui a chere clere 
Se leva moult festivement 
Et si li dist moult doucement; 
"Bien veigniez vous, ma douce mere," 
Comme douz filz, comme douz pere. 
Doucement I'a par la main prise 
Et doucement lez lui assise; 
Lors li a dit: — "A douce chiere, 
Que veus ma douce mere chiere, 
Mes amies et mes sereurs? " 



" Pierre, Pierre," our Lady said, 
" With all my heart I '11 give you aid, 
And to my gentle Son I '11 sue 
Until I beg that soul for you." 
God's Mother then arose straightway, 
And sought her Son without delay; 
All her virgins followed her. 
And Saint Peter kept him near, 
For he knew his task was done 
And his prize already won. 
Since it was hers, in whom began 
The life of God in form of Man. 

When our dear Lord, who deigned to write 
With his own hand that in his sight ~ 
Those in his kingdom held most dear 
Father and mother honoured here, — 
When He saw His Mother's face 
He rose and said with gentle grace: 
"Well are you come, my heart's desire!" 
Like loving son, like gracious sire; 
Took her hand gently in His own; 
Gently placed her on His throne, 
Wishing her graciously good cheer: — 
"What brings my gentle Mother here. 
My sister, and my dearest friend? " 



One can see Queen Blanche going to beg — or command — a fa- 
vour of her son, King Louis, and the stately dignity of their address, 
while Saint Peter and the virgins remain in the antechamber; but, as 
for Saint Peter's lost soul, the request was a mere form, and the doors 
of paradise were instantly opened to it, after such brief formalities as 
should tend to preserve the technical record of the law-court. 



274 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



We tread here on very delicate ground. Gaultier de Colncy, being 
a priest and a prior, could take liberties which we cannot or ought not 
to take. The doctrines of the Church are too serious and too ancient 
to be wilfully misstated, and the doctrines of what is called Mariolatry 
were never even doctrines of the Church. Yet it is true that, in the 
hearts of Mary's servants, the Church and its doctrines were at the 
mercy of Mary's will. Gaultier de Coincy claimed that Mary exas- 
perated the devils by exercising a wholly arbitrary and illegitimate 
power. Gaultier not merely admitted, but frankly asserted, that this 
was the fact : — 



Font li deables: — "de cest plait, 
Mai por mal, assez miex nous plest 
Que nous aillons au jugement 
Li haut jugeur qui ne ment. 
C'au plait n'au jugement sa mere 
De droit jugier est trop avere; 
Mais dieu nous juge si adroit, 
Plainement nous lest notre droit. 
Sa mere juge en tel maniere 
Qu'elle nous met touz jors arriere 
Quant nous cuidons estre devant. 

En del et en terre est plus Dame 
Par un petit que Diex ne soit. 
II I'aimme tant et tant la croit, 
N'est riens qu'elle face ne die 
Qu'il desveile ne contredie. 
Quant qu'elle veut li fait acroire, 
S'elle disoit la pie est noire 
Et I'eue trouble est toute clere: 
Si diroit il voir dit ma mere!" 



" In this law-suit," say the devils, 

"Since it is a choice of evils, 

We had best appeal on high 

To the Judge Who does not lie. 

What is law to any other, 

'T is no use pleading with His Mother; 

But God judges us so true 

That He leaves us all our due. 

His Mother judges us so short 

That she throws us out of court 

When we ought to win our cause. 

In heaven and earth she makes more laws 
By far, than God Himself can do. 
He loves her so, and trusts her so. 
There 's nothing she can do or say 
That He '11 refuse, or say her nay. 
Whatever she may want is right, 
Though she say that black is white, 
And dirty water clear as snow: — 
My Mother says it, and it's so!" 



If the Virgin took the feelings of the Trinity into consideration, or 
recognized its existence except as her Son, the case has not been 
reported, or, at all events, has been somewhat carefully kept out of 
sight by the Virgin's poets. The devils were emphatic in denouncing 
Mary for absorbing the whole Trinity. In one sharply disputed case in 
regard to a villain, or labourer, whose soul the Virgin claimed because 



LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME 



275 



he had learned the "Ave Maria," the devils became very angry, indeed, 
and protested vehemently : — 



Li lait maufe, li rechinie 

Adonc ont ris et eschinie. 

C'en font il: — "Merveillans merveille! 

Por ce vilain plate oreille 

Aprent vo Dame a saluer, 

Se nous vorro trestous tuer 

Se regarder osons vers s'ame. 

De tout le monde vieut estre Dame! 

Ains nule dame ne fu tiez. 

II est avis qu'ele soit Diex 

Ou qu'ele ait Diex en main bornie. 

Nul besoigne n'est fournie, 
Ne terrienne ne celestre, 

Que toute Dame ne veille estre. 
II est avis que tout soit suen; 
Dieu ne deable n'i ont rien." 



The ugly demons laugh outright 

And grind their teeth with envious spite; 

Crying: — "Marvel marvellous! 

Because that flat-eared ploughman there 

Learned to make your Dame a prayer, 

She would like to kill us all 

Just for looking toward his soul. 

All the world she wants to rule! 

No such Dame was ever seen! 

She thinks that she is God, I ween, 

Or holds Him in her hollow hand. 

Not a judgment or command 

Or an order can be given 

Here on earth or there in heaven. 

That she does not want control. 

She thinks that she ordains the whole. 

And keeps it all for her own profit. 

God nor Devil share not of it." 



As regards Mary of Chartres, these charges seem to have been 
literally true, except so far as concerned the "laid maufe" Pierre de 
Dreux. Gaultier de Coincy saw no impropriety in accepting, as suf- 
ficiently exact, the allegations of the devils against the Virgin's abuse 
of power. Down to the death of Queen Blanche, which is all that 
concerns us, the public saw no more impropriety in it than Gaultier 
did. The ugly, envious devils, notorious as students of the Latin Quar- 
ter, were perpetually making the same charges against Queen Blanche 
and her son, without disturbing her authority. No one could conceive 
that the Virgin held less influence In heaven than the queen mother on 
earth. Nevertheless there were points in the royal policy and conduct 
of Mary which thoughtful men even then hesitated to approve. The 
Church itself never liked to be dragged too far under feminine influ- 
ence, although the moment it discarded feminine Influence it lost nearly 
everything of any value to it or to the world, except its philosophy. 
Mary's tastes were too popular; some of the uglier devils said they 
were too low; many ladies and gentle men of the " siecle" thought them 



276 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



disreputable, though they dared not say so, or dared say so only by 
proxy, as in "Aucassins." As usual, one must go to the devils for 
the exact truth, and in spite of their outcry, the devils admitted that 
they had no reason to complain of Mary's administration: — 



"Les beles dames de grant pris 
Qui traynant vont ver et gris, 
Roys, roynes, dus et contesses, 
En enfer vienent a granz presses; 
Mais ou ciel vont pres tout a fait 
Tort et bogu et contrefait. 
Ou ciel va toute la ringaille; 
Le grain avons et diex la paUle." 



"All the great dames and ladies fair 
Who costly robes and ermine wear, 
Kings, queens, and countesses and lords 
Come down to hell in endless hordes; 
While up to heaven go the lamed, 
The dwarfs, the humpbacks, and the maimed; 
To heaven goes the whole riff-raS; 
We get the grain and God the chaff." 



True it was, although one should not say it jestingly, that the Virgin 
embarrassed the Trinity; and perhaps this was the reason, behind all 
the other excellent reasons, why men loved and adored her with a 
passion such as no other deity has ever inspired : and why we, although 
utter strangers to her, are not far from getting down on our knees and 
praying to her still. Mary concentrated in herself the whole rebellion 
of man against fate; the whole protest against divine law; the whole 
contempt for human law as its outcome; the whole unutterable fury 
of human nature beating itself against the walls of its prison-house, 
and suddenly seized by a hope that in the Virgin man had found a 
door of escape. She was above law ; she took feminine pleasure in turn- 
ing hell into an ornament; she delighted in trampling on every social 
distinction in this world and the next. She knew that the universe was 
as unintelligible to her, on any theory of morals, as it was to her wor- 
shippers, and she felt, like them, no sure conviction that it was any 
more intelligible to the Creator of it. To her, every suppliant was a 
universe in itself, to be judged apart, on his own merits, by his love for 
her, — by no means on his orthodoxy, or his conventional standing in 
the Church, or according to his correctness in defining the nature of the 
Trinity. The convulsive hold which Mary to this day maintains over 
human imagination — as you can see at Lourdes — was due much less 



LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME 277 

to her power of saving soul or body than to her sympathy with people 
who suffered under law, — divine or human, — justly or unjustly, by 
accident or design, by decree of God or by guile of Devil. She cared not 
a straw for conventional morality, and she had no notion of letting 
her friends be punished, to the tenth or any other generation, for the 
sins of their ancestors or the peccadilloes of Eve. 

So Mary filled heaven with a sort of persons little to the taste of 
any respectable middle-class society, which has trouble enough in 
making this world decent and pay its bills, without having to continue 
the effort in another. Mary stood in a Church of her own, so independ- 
ent that the Trinity might have perished without much affecting 
her position; but, on the other hand, the Trinity could look on and see 
her dethroned with almost a breath of relief. Aucassins and the devils 
of Gaultier de Coincy foresaw her danger. Mary's treatment of re- 
spectable and law-abiding people who had no favours to ask, and were 
reasonably confident of getting to heaven by the regular judgment, 
without expense, rankled so deeply that three hundred years later the 
Puritan reformers were not satisfied with abolishing her, but sought to 
abolish the woman altogether as the cause of all evil in heaven and 
on earth. The Puritans abandoned the New Testament and the Virgin 
in order to go back to the beginning, and renew the quarrel with Eve. 
This is the Church's affair, not ours, and the women are competent 
to settle it with Church or State, without help from outside; but hon- 
est tourists are seriously interested in putting the feeling back into the 
dead architecture where it belongs. 

Mary was rarely harsh to any suppliant or servant, and she took 
no special interest in humiliating the rich or the learned or the 
wise. For them, law was made; by them, law was administered; and 
with their doings Mary never arbitrarily interfered ; but occasionally 
she could not resist the temptation to intimate her opinion of the man- 
ner in which the Trinity allowed their — the regular — Church to be 
administered. She was a queen, and never for an instant forgot it, but 



2-]^ MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

she took little thought about her divine rights, if she had any, — and in 
fact Saint Bernard preferred her without them, — while she was scan- 
dalized at the greed of officials in her Son's Court. One day a rich 
usurer and a very poor old woman happened to be dying in the same 
town. Gaultier de Coincy did not say, as an accurate historian should, 
that he was present, nor did he mention names or dates, although it 
was one of his longest and best stories. Mary never loved bankers, 
and had no reason for taking interest in this one, or for doing him 
injury; but it happened that the parish priest was summoned to both 
death-beds at the same time, and neglected the old pauper in the hope 
of securing a bequest for his church from the banker. This was the 
sort of fault that most annoyed Mary in the Church of the Trinity, 
which, in her opinion, was not cared for as it should be, and she felt 
it her duty to intimate as much. 

Although the priest refused to come at the old woman's summons, 
his young clerk, who seems to have acted as vicar though not in 
orders, took pity on her, and went alone with the sacrament to her 
hut, which was the poorest of poor hovels even for that age: — 

Close de piex et de serciaus Roof of hoops, and wall of logs, 

Comme une viez souz a porciaus. Like a wretched stye for hogs. 

There the beggar lay, already insensible or at the last gasp, on coarse 
thatch, on the ground, covered by an old hempen sack. The picture 
represented the extremest poverty of the thirteenth century; a hovel 
without even a feather bed or bedstead, as Aucassins' ploughman 
described his mother's want; and the old woman alone, dying, as the 
clerk appeared at the opening : — 

Li clers qui fu moult bien apris The clerk, well in these duties taught, 

Le cors Nostre Seigneur a pris The body of our Saviour brought 

A I'ostel a la povre fame Where she lay upon her bed 

S'en vient touz seus mes n'i treuve ame. Without a soul to give her aid. 

Si grant clarte y a veue But such brightness there he saw 

Que grant peeur en a eue. As filled his mind with fear and awe. 

Ou povre lit a la vieillete Covered with a mat of straw 

Qui couvers iert d'une nateite The woman lay; but round and near 



LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME 



279 



Assises voit XII puceles 
Si avenans et si ties beles 
N'est nus tant penser i seust 
Qxii raconter le vout peust. 
A coutee voist Nostre Dame 
Sus le chevez la povre fame 
Qui por la mort sue et travaille. 
La Mere Dieu d'une tovaille 
Qui blanche est plus que fleur de lis 
La grant sueur d'entor le vis 
A ses blanches mains li essuie. 



A dozen maidens sat, so fair 

No mortal man could dream such light, 

No mortal tongue describe the sight. 

Then he saw that next the bed. 

By the poor old woman's head, 

As she gasped and strained for breath 

In the agony of death. 

Sat Our Lady, — bending low, — 

While, with napkin white as snow. 

She dried the death-sweat on the brow. 



The clerk, in terror, hesitated whether to turn and run away, but 
Our Lady beckoned him to the bed, while all rose and kneeled devoutly 
to the sacrament. Then she said to the trembling clerk : — 

** Friend, be not afraid! 
But seat yourself, to give us aid, 
Beside these maidens, on the bed." 

And when the clerk had obeyed, she continued — 



"Or tost, amis!" fait Nostre Dame, 

" Confessies ceste bone fame 

Et puis apres tout sans freeur 

Recevra tost son sauveeur 

Qui char et sane vout en moi prendre." 



" Come quickly, friend! " Our Lady says, 

"This good old woman now confess 

And afterwards without distress 

She will at once receive her God 

Who deigned in me take flesh and blood." 



After the sacrament came a touch of realism that recalls the simple 
death-scenes that Walter Scott described in his grand twelfth-century 
manner. The old woman lingered pitiably in her agony: — 



Lors dit une des demoiseles 
A madame sainte Marie: 
"Encore, dame, n'istra mie 
Si com moi semble du cors I'ame." 
"Bele fille," fait Nostre Dame, 1 
"Traveiller lais un peu le cors, 
Aingois que Tame en isse hors, 
Si que puree soit et nete 
Aingois qu'en Paradis la mete. 
N'est or mestier qui soions plus, 
Ralon nous en ou ciel lassus. 
Quant tens en iert bien reviendrons 
En paradis I'ame emmerrons." 



A maiden said to Saint Marie, 

"My lady, still it seems to me 
The soul will not the body fly." 
"Fair child!" Our Lady made reply, 
"Still let awhile the body fight 
Before the soul shall leave it quite. 
So that it pure may be, and cleansed 
When it to Paradise ascends. 
No longer need we here remain; 
We can go back to heaven again; 
We will return before she dies. 
And take the soul to paradise." 



28o MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

The rest of the story concerned the usurer, whose death-bed was 
of a different character, but Mary's interest in death-beds of that kind 
was small. The fate of the usurer mattered the less because she knew 
too well how easily the banker, in good credit, could arrange with the 
officials of the Trinity to open the doors of paradise for him. The 
administration of heaven was very like the administration of France ; 
the Queen Mother saw many things of which she could not wholly 
approve; but her nature was pity, not justice, and she shut her eyes 
to much that she could not change. Her miracles, therefore, were for 
the most part mere evidence of her pity for those who needed it most, 
and these were rarely the well-to-do people of the siecle, but more 
commonly the helpless. Every saint performed miracles, and these are 
standard, not peculiar to any one intermediator; and every saint pro- 
tected his own friends; but beyond these exhibitions of power, which 
are more or less common to the whole hierarchy below the Trinity, Mary 
was the mother of pity and the only hope of despair. One might go on 
for a volume, studying the character of Mary and the changes that 
time made in it, from the earliest Byzantine legends down to the daily 
recorded miracles at Lourdes ; no character in history has had so long or 
varied a development, and none so sympathetic; but the greatest poets 
long ago plundered that mine of rich motives, and have stolen what 
was most dramatic for popular use. The Virgin's most famous early 
miracle seems to have been that of the monk Theophilus, which was 
what one might call her salvation of Faust. Another Byzantine miracle 
was an original version of Shylock. Shakespeare and his fellow-drama- 
tists plundered the Church legends as freely as their masters plundered 
the Church treasuries, yet left a mass of dramatic material untouched. 
Let us pray the Virgin that it may remain untouched, for, although a 
good miracle was in its day worth much money, — so much that the 
rival shrines stole each other's miracles without decency, — one does 
notcare to see one's Virgin put to money-making for Jew theatre-manag- 
ers. One's two hundred and fifty million arithmetical ancestors shrink. 



LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME 



281 



For mere amusement, too, the miracle is worth reading of the little 
Jew child who ignorantly joined in the Christian communion, and was 
thrown into a furnace by his father in consequence ; but when the fur- 
nace was opened, the Virgin appeared seated in the midst of the flames, 
with the little child unharmed in her lap. A better is that called the 
"Tombeor de Notre Dame," only recently printed; told by some un- 
known poet of the thirteenth century, and told as well as any of 
Gaultier de Coincy's. Indeed the "Tombeor de Notre Dame" has 
had more success in our time than it ever had in its own, as far as one 
knows, for it appeals to a quiet sense of humour that pleases modern 
French taste as much as it pleased the Virgin. One fears only to spoil 
it by translation, but if a translation be merely used as a glossary or 
footnote, it need not do fatal harm. 

The story is that of a tumbler — tombeor, street-acrobat — who was 
disgusted with the world, as his class has had a reputation for becoming, 
and who was fortunate enough to obtain admission into the famous 
monastery of Clairvaux, where Saint Bernard may have formerly been 
blessed by the Virgin's presence. Ignorant at best, and especially igno- 
rant of letters, music, and the offices of a religious society, he found 
himself unable to join in the services: — 



Car n'ot vescu fors de turner 
Et d'espringier et de baler. 
Treper, saillir, ice savoit; 
Ne d'autre rien il ne savoit; 
Car ne savoit autre legon 
Ne "pater noster" ne changon 
Ne le "credo" ne le salu 
Ne rien qui fust a son salu. 



For he had learned no other thing 
Than to tumble, dance and spring: 
Leaping and vaulting, that he knew, 
But nothing better could he do. 
He could not say his prayers by rote; 
Not "Pater noster"; not a note; 
Not "Ave Mary," nor the creed; 
Nothing to help his soul in need. 



Tormented by the sense of his uselessness to the society whose 
bread he ate without giving a return in service, and afraid of being 
expelled as a useless member, one day while the bells were calling to 
mass he hid in the crypt, and in despair began to soliloquize before 
the Virgin's altar, at the same spot, one hopes, where the Virgin had 



282 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



shown herself, or might have shown herself, in her infinite bounty, to 
Saint Bernard, a hundred years before: — 



"Hai," fait il, "con suis trais! 

Or dira ja cascuns sa laisse 

Et jo suis gi i hues en laisse 

Qui ne fas ci fors que broster 

Et viandes por nient gaster. 

Si ne dirai ne ne ferai? 

Par la mere deu, si ferai! 

Ja n'en serai ore repris; 

Jo ferai ce que j'ai apris; 

Si servirai de men mestier 

La mere deu en son mostier; 

Li autre servent de canter 

Et jo servirai de turner." 

Sa cape oste, si se despoille, 

Deles I'autel met sa despoille, 

Mais por sa char que ne soit nue 

Une cotele a retenue 

Qui moult estait tenre et alise, 

Petit vaut miex d'une chemise, 

Si est en pur le cors remes. 

II s'est bien chains et acesmes, 

Sa cote gaint et bien s'atorne, 

Devers I'ymage se retorne 

Mout humblement et si I'esgarde: 

"Dame," fait il, "en vostre garde 

Comant jo et mon cors et m'ame. 

Douce reine, douce dame, 

Ne despisies ce que jo sai 

Car jo me voil metre a I'asai 

De vos servir en bone foi 

Se dex m'ait sans nul desroi. 

Jo ne sai canter ne lire 

Mais certes jo vos voU eslire 

Tos mes biax gieus a esligon. 

Or sole al fuer de tauregon 

Qui trepe et saut devant sa mere. 

Dame, qui n'estes mie amere 

A eels qui vos servent a droit, 

Quelsque jo sole, por vos soit!" 

Lors li commence a faire saus 
Bas et petits et grans et haus 



"Ha!" said he, "how I am ashamed! 

To sing his part goes now each priest, 

And I stand here, a tethered beast. 

Who nothing do but browse and feed 

And waste the food that others need. 

Shall I say nothing, and stand still? 

No! by God's mother, but I will! 

She shall not think me here for naught ; 

At least I'll do what I've been taught! 

At least I '11 serve in my own way 

God's mother in her church to-day. 

The others serve to pray and sing; 

I will serve to leap and spring." 

Then he strips him of his gown. 

Lays it on the altar down; 

But for himself he takes good care 

Not to show his body bare, 

But keeps a jacket, soft and thin. 

Almost a shirt, to tumble in. 

Clothed in this supple woof of maiUe 

His strength and health and form showed well, 

And when his belt is buckled fast. 

Toward the Virgin turns at last : 

Very humbly makes his prayer; 

"Lady!" says he, "to your care 

I commit my soul and frame. 

Gentle Virgin, gentle dame, 

Do not despise what I shall do, 

For I ask only to please you, 

To serve you like an honest man. 

So help me God, the best I can. 

I cannot chant, nor can I read. 

But I can show you here instead, 

All my best tricks to make you laugh, 

And so shall be as though a calf 

Should leap and jump before its dam. 

Lady, who never yet could blame 

Those who serve you well and true, 

All that I am, I am for you." 

Then he begins to jump about, 
High and low, and in and out, 



LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME 283 

Primes deseur et puis desos, Straining hard with might and main; 

Puis se remet sor ses genols, Then, falling on his knees again, 

Devers I'ymage, et si I'encline: Before the image bows his face: 

"He!" fait il, "tres douce reine "By your pity! by your grace!" 

Par vo pi tie, par vo francise. Says he, "Ha! my gentle queen, 

Ne despisies pas mon servise!" Do not despise my offering!" 

In his earnestness he exerted himself until, at the end of his strength, 
he lay exhausted and unconscious on the altar steps. Pleased with his 
own exhibition, and satisfied that the Virgin was equally pleased, he 
continued these devotions every day, until at last his constant and 
singular absence from the regular services attracted the curiosity of 
a monk, who kept watch on him and reported his eccentric exercise 
to the Abbot. 

The mediaeval monasteries seem to have been gently administered. 
Indeed, this has been made the chief reproach on them, and the excuse 
for robbing them for the benefit of a more energetic crown and nobility 
who tolerated no beggars or idleness but their own ; at least, it is safe 
to say that few well-regulated and economically administered modern 
charities would have the patience of the Abbot of Clairvaux, who, in- 
stead of calling up the weak-minded tombeor and sending him back to 
the world to earn a living by his profession, went with his informant 
to the crypt, to see for himself what the strange report meant. We 
have seen at Chartres what a crypt may be, and how easily one might 
hide in its shadows while mass is said at the altars. The Abbot and 
his informant hid themselves behind a column in the shadow, and 
watched the whole performance to its end when the exhausted tumbler 
dropped unconscious and drenched with perspiration on the steps of 
the altar, with the words : — 

"Dame!" fait il, "ne puis plus ore; "Lady!" says he, "no more I can, 

Mais voire je reviendrai encore." But truly I '11 come back again! " 

You can imagine the dim crypt; the tumbler lying unconscious 
beneath the image of the Virgin; the Abbot peering out from the 
shadow of the column, and wondering what sort of discipline he could 



284 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



inflict for this unforeseen infraction of rule; when suddenly, before he 
could decide what next to do, the vault above the altar, of its own 
accord, opened: — 



L'abes esgarde sans atendre 
Et vit de la volte descendre 
Une dame si gloriouse 
Ains nus ne vit si preciouse 
Ni si ricement conreee, 
N'onques tant bele ne fu nee. 
Ses vesteures sont bien chieres 
D'or et de precieuses pieres. 
Avec li estoient li angle 
Del del amont, et li arcangle, 
Qui entor le menestrel vienent, 
Si le solacent et sostienent. 
Quant entor lui sont arengie 
S'ot tot son cuer asoagie. 
Dont s'aprestent de lui servir 
Por ce qu'ils volrent deservir 
La servise que fait la dame 
Qui tant est precieuse geme. 
Et la douce reine france 
Tenoit une touaille blance, 
S'en avente son menestl^el 
Mout doucement devant I'autel. 
La franc dame debonnaire 
Le col, le cors, et le viaire 
Li avente por refroidier; 
Bien s'entremet de lui aidier; 
La dame bien s'i abandone; 
Li bons horn garde ne s'en done, 
Car il ne voit, si ne set mie 
Qu'il ait si bele compaignie. 



The Abbot strains his eyes to see, 
And, from the vaulting, suddenly, 
A lady steps, — so glorious, — 
Beyond all thought so precious, — 
Her robes so rich, so nobly worn, — 
So rare the gems the robes adorn, — 
As never yet so fair was born. 

Along with her the angels were. 
Archangels stood beside her there; 
Round about the tumbler group 
To give him solace, bring him hope; 
And when round him in ranks they stood, 
His whole heart felt its strength renewed. 
So they haste to give him aid 
Because their wills are only made 
To serve the service of their Queen, 
Most precious gem the earth has seen. 
And the lady, gentle, true, 
Holds in her hand a towel new; 
Fans him with her hand divine 
Where he lies before the shrine. 
The kind lady, full of grace. 
Fans his neck, his breast, his face! 
Fans him herself to give him air! 
Labours, herself, to help him there! 
The lady gives herself to it; 
The poor man takes no heed of it; 
For he knows not and cannot see 
That he has such fair company. 



Beyond this we need not care to go. If you cannot feel the colour 
and quality — the union of naivete and art, the refinement, the in- 
finite delicacy and tenderness — of this little poem, then nothing will 
matter much to you; and if you can feel it, you can feel, without more 
assistance, the majesty of Chartres. 



CHAPTER XIV 

ABELARD 

Super cuncta, subter cuncta, 
Extra cuncta, intra cuncta, 
Intra cuncta nee inclusus. 
Extra cuncta nee exclusus. 
Super cuncta nee elatus, 
Subter cuncta nee substratus, 
Super totus, praesidendo, 
Subter totus, sustinendo, 
Extra totus, complectendo, 
Intra totus est, implendo. 

ACCORDING to Hildebert, Bishop of Le Mans and Archbishop 
of Tours, these verses describe God. Hildebert was the first 
poet of his time; no small merit, since he was contemporary with the 
" Chanson de Roland " and the first crusade; he was also a strong man, 
since he was able, as Bishop of Le Mans, to gain great credit by main- 
taining himself against William the Norman and Fulk of Anjou; and 
finally he was a prelate of high authority. He lived between 1055 and 
II 33. Supposing his verses to have been written in middle life, toward 
the year iioo, they may be taken to represent the accepted doctrine 
of the Church at the time of the first crusade. They were little more 
than a versified form of the Latin of Saint Gregory the Great who 
wrote five hundred years before: "Ipse manet intra omnia, ipse extra 
omnia, ipse supra omnia, ipse infra omnia; et superior est per poten- 
tiam et inferior per sustentationem ; exterior per magnitudinem et 
interior per subtilitatem ; sursum regens, deorsum continens, extra 
circumdans, interius penetrans; nee alia parte superior, alia inferior, 
aut alia ex parte exterior atque ex alia manet interior, sed unus idem- 
que totus ubique." According to Saint Gregory, in the sixth century, 
God was "one and the same and wholly everywhere"; "immanent 



286 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

within everything, without everything, above everything, below 
everything, sursum regens, deorsum continens''; while according 
to Archbishop Hildebert in the eleventh century: "God is over all 
things, under all things; outside all, inside all; within but not enclosed; 
without but not excluded ; above but not raised up ; below but not de- 
pressed; wholly above, presiding; wholly beneath, sustaining; wholly 
without, embracing ; wholly within, filling. ' ' Finally, according to Bene- 
dict Spinoza, another five hundred years later still : * ' God is a being, ab- 
solutely infinite ; that is to say, a substance made up of an infinity of 
attributes, each one of which expresses an eternal and infinite essence." 

Spinoza was the great pantheist, whose name is still a terror to the 
orthodox, and whose philosophy is — very properly — a horror to the 
Church; and yet Spinoza never wrote a line that, to the unguided 
student, sounds more Spinozist than the words of Saint Gregory and 
Archbishop Hildebert. If God is everywhere; wholly; presiding, sus- 
taining, embracing and filling, "sursum regens, deorsum continens," 
He is the only possible energy, and leaves no place for human will to 
act. A force which is "one and the same and wholly everywhere" is 
more Spinozist than Spinoza, and is likely to be mistaken for frank 
pantheism by the large majority of religious minds who must try 
to understand it without a theological course in a Jesuit college. In 
the year i lOO Jesuit colleges did not exist, and even the great Domini- 
can and Franciscan schools were far from sight in the future; but the 
School of Notre Dame at Paris existed, and taught the existence of God 
much as Archbishop Hildebert described it. The most successful lec- 
turer was William of Champeaux, and to any one who ever heard of 
William at all, the name instantly calls up the figure of Abelard, in 
flesh and blood, as he sang to Heloise the songs which he says re- 
sounded through Europe. The twelfth century, with all its sparkle, 
would be dull without Abelard and Heloise. 

With infinite regret, Heloise must be left out of the story, because 
she was not a philosopher or a poet or an artist, but only a French- 



ABELARD 287 

woman to the last millimetre of her shadow. Even though one may 
suspect that her famous letters to Abelard are, for the most part, by 
no means above scepticism, she was, by French standards, worth at 
least a dozen Abelards, if only because she called Saint Bernard a false 
apostle. Unfortunately, French standards, by which she must be 
judged in our ignorance, take for granted that she philosophized only 
for the sake of Abelard, while Abelard taught philosophy to her not so 
much because he believed in philosophy or in her as because he believed 
in himself. To this day, Abelard remains a problem as perplexing as 
he must have been to Heloise, and almost as fascinating. As the west 
portal of Chartres is the door through which one must of necessity 
enter the Gothic architecture of the thirteenth century, so Abelard is 
the portal of approach to the Gothic thought and philosophy within. 
Neither art nor thought has a modern equivalent; only Heloise, like 
Isolde, unites the ages. 

The first crusade seems, in perspective, to have filled the whole field 
of vision in France at the time; but, in fact, France seethed with other 
emotions, and while the crusaders set out to scale heaven by force at 
Jerusalem, the monks, who remained at home, undertook to scale 
heaven by prayer and by absorption of body and soul in God ; the Cis- 
tercian Order was founded in 1098, and was joined in 11 12 by young 
Bernard, born in 1090 at Fontaines-les- Dijon, drawing with him or 
after him so many thousands of young men into the self-immolation 
of the monastery as carried dismay into the hearts of half the women 
of France. At the same time — that is, about 1098 or 1 100 — Abelard 
came up to Paris from Brittany, with as much faith in logic as Bernard 
had in prayer or Godfrey of Bouillon in arms, and led an equal or even 
a greater number of combatants to the conquest of heaven by force of 
pure reason. None showed doubt. Hundreds of thousands of young 
men wandered from their provinces, mostly to Palestine, largely to 
cloisters, but also in great numbers to Paris and the schools, while few 
ever returned. 



288 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

Abelard had the advantage of being well-born; not so highly de- 
scended as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas who were to com- 
plete his work in the thirteenth century, but, like Bernard, a gentle- 
man born and bred. He was the eldest son of Berenger, Sieur du 
Pallet, a chtoau in Brittany, south of the Loire, on the edge of Poitou. 
His name was Pierre du Pallet, although, for some unknown reason, he 
called himself Pierre Abailard, or Abeillard, or Esbaillart, or Beylard; 
for the spelling was never fixed. He was born in 1079, and when, in 
1096, the young men of his rank were rushing off to the first crusade, 
Pierre, a boy of seventeen, threw himself with equal zeal into the study 
of science, and, giving up his inheritance or birthright, at last came to 
Paris to seize a position in the schools. The year is supposed to have 
been iioo. 

The Paris of Abelard's time was astonishingly old; so old that 
hardly a stone of it can be now pointed out. Even the oldest of the 
buildings still standing in that quarter — Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, 
Saint-Severin, and the tower of the Lycee Henri IV — are more mod- 
ern; only the old Roman Thermae, now part of the Musee de Cluny, 
within the walls, and the Abbey Tower of Saint-Germainrdes-Pres, 
outside, in the fields, were standing in the year 11 00. Politically, 
Paris was a small provincial town before the reign of Louis-le-Gros 
(i 108-37), who cleared its gates of its nearest enemies; but as a school, 
Paris was even then easily first. Students crowded into it by thousands, 
till the town is said to have contained more students than citizens. 
Modern Paris seems to have begun as a university town before it had 
a university. Students flocked to it from great distances, encouraged 
and supported by charity, and stimulated by privileges, until they took 
entire possession of what is still called the Latin Quarter from the bar- 
barous Latin they chattered; and a town more riotous, drunken, and 
vicious than it became, in the course of time, hardly existed even in 
the Middle Ages. In iioo, when enthusiasm was fresh and faith in 
science was strong, the great mass of students came there to study, 



ABELARD 289 

and, having no regular university organization or buildings, they 
thronged the cloister of Notre Dame, — not our Notre Dame, which 
dates only from 1 163, but the old Romanesque cathedral which stood 
on the same spot, — and there they listened, and retained what they 
could remember, for they were not encouraged to take notes even 
if they were rich enough to buy notebooks, while manuscripts were 
far beyond their means. One valuable right the students seem to 
have had — that of asking questions and even of disputing with the 
lecturer provided they followed the correct form of dialectics. The 
lecturer himself was licensed by the Bishop. 

Five thousand students are supposed to have swarmed about the 
cloister of Notre Dame, across the Petit Pont, and up the hill of Sainte- 
Genevieve; three thousand are said to have paid fees to Abelard in the 
days of his great vogue and they seem to have attached themselves to 
their favourite master as a champion to be upheld against the world. 
Jealousies ran high, and neither scholars nor masters shunned dispute. 
Indeed, the only science they taught or knew was the art of dispute 
. — dialectics. Rhetoric, grammar, and dialectics were the regular 
branches of science, and bold students, who were not afraid of dabbling 
in forbidden fields, extended their studies to mathematics — "exer- 
citium nefarium," according to Abelard, which he professed to know 
nothing about but which he studied nevertheless. Abelard, whether 
pupil or master, never held his tongue if he could help it, for his for- 
tune depended on using it well ; but he never used it so well in dialectics 
or theology as he did, toward the end of his life, in writing a bit of 
autobiography, so admirably told, so vivid, so vibrating with the curi- 
ous intensity of his generation, that it needed only to have been written 
in "Romieu" to be the chief monument of early French prose, as the 
western portal of Chartres is the chief monument of early French 
sculpture, and of about the same date. Unfortunately Abelard was 
a noble scholar, who necessarily wrote and talked Latin, even with 
Heloise, and, although the Latin was mediaeval, it is not much the 



290 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

better on that account, because, in spite of its quaintness, the naivetes 
of a young language — the egotism, jealousies, suspicions, boastings, 
and lamentations of a childlike time — take a false air of outworn 
Rome and Byzantium, although, underneath, the spirit lives: — 

I arrived at last in Paris where for a long time dialectics had specially flourished 
under William of Champeaux, rightly reckoned the first of my masters in that 
branch of study. I stayed some time in his school, but, though well received at 
first, I soon got to be an annoyance to him because I persisted in refuting certain 
ideas of his, and because, not being afraid to enter into argument against him, I 
sometimes got the better. This boldness, too, roused the wrath of those fellow- 
students who were classed higher, because I was'the youngest and the last comer. 
This was the beginning of my series of misfortunes which still last; my renown 
every day increasing, envy was kindled against me in every direction. 

This picture of the boy of twenty, harassing the professor, day 
after day, in his own lecture-room before hundreds of older students, 
paints Abelard to the life ; but one may safely add a few touches that 
heighten the efifect; as that William of Champeaux himself was barely 
thirty, and that Abelard throughout his career, made use of every 
social and personal advantage to gain a point, with little scruple either 
in manner or in sophistry. One may easily imagine the scene. Teachers 
are always much the same. Pupils and students diflfer only in degrees 
of docility. In i lOO, both classes began by accepting the foundations of 
society, as they have to do still; only they then accepted laws of the 
Church and Aristotle, while now they accept laws of the legislature 
and of energy. In iioo, the students took for granted that, with the 
help of Aristotle and syllogisms, they could build out the Church 
intellectually, as the architects, with the help of the pointed arch, were 
soon to enlarge it architecturally. They never doubted the certainty 
of their method. To them words had fixed values, like numbers, and 
syllogisms were hewn stones that needed only to be set in place, in 
order to reach any height or support any weight. Every sentence was 
made to take the form of a syllogism. One must have been educated 
in a Jesuit or Dominican school in order to frame these syllogisms 



ABELARD 291 

correctly, but merely by way of illustration one may timidly suggest 
how the phrases sounded in their simplest form. For example, Plato or 
other equally good authority defined substance as that which stands 
underneath phenomena; the most universal of universals, the ultimate, 
the highest in order of generalization. The ultimate essence or sub- 
stance is indivisible ; God is substance ; God is indivisible. The divine 
substance is incapable of alteration or accident; all other substance is 
liable to alteration or accident ; therefore, the divine substance differs 
from all other substance. A substance is a universal; as for example, Hu- 
manity, or the Human, is a universal and indivisible ; the Man Socrates, 
for instance, is not a universal, but an individual; therefore, the sub- 
stance Humanity, being indivisible, must exist entire and undivided 
in Socrates. 

The form of logic most fascinating to youthful minds, as well as to 
some minds that are only too acute, is the reductio ad ahsurdum; the 
forcing an opponent into an absurd alternative or admission; and 
the syllogism lent itself happily to this use. Socrates abused the weapon 
and Abelard was the first French master of the art ; but neither State 
nor Church likes to be reduced to an absurdity, and, on the whole, both 
Socrates and Abelard fared ill in the result. Even now, one had best 
be civil toward the idols of the forum. Abelard would find most of his 
old problems sensitive to his touch to-day. Time has settled few or 
none of the essential points of dispute. Science hesitates, more visibly 
than the Church ever did, to decide once for all whether unity or 
diversity is ultimate law; whether order or chaos is the governing rule 
of the universe, if universe there is ; whether anything, except phenom- 
ena, exists. Even in matters more vital to society, one dares not speak 
too loud. Why, and forwhat, and to whom, is a man a responsible agent? 
Every jury and judge, every lawyer and doctor, every legislator and 
clergyman has his own views, and the law constantly varies. Every 
nation may have a different system. One court may hang and another 
may acquit for the same crime, on the same day; and science only 



292 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

repeats what the Church said to Abelard, that where we know so little, 
we had better hold our tongues. 

According to the latest authorities, the doctrine of universals which 
convulsed the schools of the twelfth century has never received an 
adequate answer. What is a species? what is a genus or a family or 
an order? More or less convenient terms of classification, about which 
the twelfth century cared very little, while it cared deeply about the 
essence of classes ! Science has become too complex to affirm the exist- 
ence of universal truths, but it strives for nothing else, and disputes the 
problem, within its own limits, almost as earnestly as in the twelfth 
century, when the whole field of human and superhuman activity was 
shut between these barriers of substance, universals, and particulars. 
Little has changed except the vocabulary and the method. The schools 
knew that their society hung for life on the demonstration that God, 
the ultimate universal, was a reality, out of which all other universal 
truths or realities sprang. Truth was a real thing, outside of human 
experience. The schools of Paris talked and thought of nothing else. 
John of Salisbury, who attended Abelard's lectures about 1 136, and 
became Bishop of Chartres in 1 176, seems to have been more surprised 
than we need be at the intensity of the emotion. *'One never gets 
away from this question," he said. ' ' From whatever point a discussion 
starts, it is always led back and attached to that. It is the madness of 
Ruf us about Nsevia ; ' He thinks of nothing else ; talks of nothing else, 
and if Nsevia did not exist, Ruf us would be dumb.' " 

Abelard began it. After his first visit to Paris in 1 100, he seems to 
have passed several years elsewhere, while Guillaume de Champeaux 
in 1 108, retired from the school in the cloister of Notre Dame, and, 
taking orders, established a class in a chapel near by, afterwards 
famous as the Abbaye-de-Saint- Victor. The Jardin des Plantes and 
the Care d'Orleans now cover the ground where the Abbey stood, on 
the banks of the Seine outside the Latin Quarter, and not a trace is 
left of its site ; but there William continued his course in dialectics, 



ABELARD 293 

until suddenly Abelard reappeared arnong his scholars, and resumed 
his old attacks. This time Abelard could hardly call himself a 
student. He was thirty years old, and long since had been himself 
a teacher; he had attended William's course on dialectics nearly ten 
years before, and was past master in the art; he had nothing to learn 
from William in theology, for neither William nor he was yet a theol- 
ogist by profession. If Abelard went back to school, it was certainly 
not to learn ; but indeed, he himself made little or no pretence of it, 
and told with childlike candour not only why he went, but also how 
brilliantly he succeeded in his object: — 

I returned to study rhetoric in his school. Among other controversial battles, I 
succeeded, by the most irrefutable argument, in making him change, or rather 
ruin his doctrine of universals. His doctrine consisted in affirming the perfect 
identity of the essence in every individual of the same species, so that according 
to him there was no difference in the essence but only in the infinite variety of 
accidents. He then came to amend his doctrine so as to affirm, not the identity any 
longer, but the absence of distinction — the want of difference — in the essence. 
And as this question of universals had always been one of the most important ques- 
tions of dialectics, — so important that Porphyry, touching on it in his Preliminar- 
ies, did not dare to take the responsibility of cutting the knot, but said, "It is a very 
grave point," — Champeaux, who was obliged to modify his idea and then renounce 
it, saw his course fall into such discredit that they hardly let him make his dialecti- 
cal lectures, as though dialectics consisted entirely in the question of universals. 

Why was this point so "very grave"? Not because it was mere 
dialectics! The only part of the story that seems grave to-day is the 
part that Abelard left out; the part which Saint Bernard, thirty years 
later pu^ in, on behalf of William. We should be more credulous than 
twelfth-century monks, if we believed, on Abelard's word in 1 135, that 
in I no he had driven out of the schools the most accomplished dialec- 
tician of the age by an objection so familiar that no other dialectician 
was ever silenced by it, — whatever may have been the case with theo- 
logians, — and so obvious that it could not have troubled a scholar 
of fifteen. William stated a settled doctrine as old as Plato; Abe- 
lard interposed an objection as old as Aristotle. Probably Plato and 



294 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

Aristotle had received the question and answer from philosophers ten 
thousand years older than themselves. Certainly the whole of philos- 
ophy has always been involved in the dispute. 

The subject is as amusing as a comedy; so amusing that ten minutes 
may be well given to playing the scene between William and Abelard, 
not as it happened, but in a form nearer our ignorance, with liberty 
to invent arguments for William, and analogies — which are figures 
intended to serve as fatal weapons if they succeed, and as innocent 
toys if they fail — such as he never imagined ; while Abelard can 
respond with his true rejoinder, fatal in a different sense. For the chief 
analogy, the notes of music would serve, or the colours of the solar 
spectrum, or an energy, such as gravity; — but the best is geometrical, 
because Euclid was as scholastic as William of Champeaux himself, and 
his axioms are even more familiar to the schoolboy of the twentieth, 
than to the schoolman of the twelfth century. 

In these scholastic tournaments the two champions started from 
opposite points: — one, from the ultimate substance, God, — the uni- 
versal, the ideal, the type; — the other from the individual, Socrates, 
the concrete, the observed fact of experience, the object of sensual per- 
ception. The first champion — William in this instance — assumed 
that the universal was a real thing ; and for that reason he was called 
a realist. His opponent — Abelard — held that the universal was only 
nominally real ; and on that account he was called a nominalist. Truth, 
virtue, humanity, exist as units and realities, said William. Truth, 
replied Abelard, is only the sum of all possible facts that are true, 
as humanity is the sum of all actual human beings. The ideal bed 
is a form, made by God, said Plato. The ideal bed is a name, jmag- 
jned by ourselves, said Aristotle. "I start from the universe," said 
WiUiam. "I start from the atom," said Abelard; and, once having 
started, they necessarily came into collision at some point between 
the two. 

William of Champeaux, lecturing on dialectics or logic, comes to the 



ABELARD 295 

question of universals, which he says, are substances. Starting from 
the highest substance, God, all being descends through created sub- 
stances by stages, until it reaches the substance animality, from which 
it descends to the substance humanity : and humanity being, like other 
essences or substances, indivisible, passes wholly into each individual, 
becoming Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, much as the divine substance 
exists wholly and undivided in each member of the Trinity. 

Here Abelard interrupts. The divine substance, he says, operates 
by laws of its own, and cannot be used for comparison. In treating of 
human substance, one is bound by human limitations. If the whole 
of humanity is in Socrates, it is wholly absorbed by Socrates, and can- 
not be at the same time in Plato, or elsewhere. Following his favourite 
reductio ad absurdum, Abelard turns the idea round, and infers from 
it that, since Socrates carries all humanity in him, he carries Plato, 
too; and both must be in the same place, though Socrates is at Athens 
and Plato in Rome. 

The objection is familiar to William, who replies by another com- 
. monplace : — 

"Mr. Abelard, might I, without offence, ask you a simple matter? 
Can you give me Euclid's definition of a point?" 

"If I remember right it is, 'illud cujus nulla pars est'; that which 
has no parts." 

"Has it existence?" 

"Only in our minds." 

"Not, then, in God?" 

"All necessary truths exist first in God. If the point is a necessary 
truth, it exists first there." 

"Then might I ask you for Euclid's definition of the line?" 

"The line is that which has only extension; 'Linea vocatur ilia quae 
solam longitudinem habet.'" 

"Can you conceive an infinite straight line?" 

"Only as a line which has no end, like the point extended." 



296 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

"Supposing we imagine a straight line, like opposite rays of the sun, 
proceeding in opposite directions to infinity — is it real?" 

"It has no reality except in the mind that conceives it." 

"Supposing we divide that line which has no reality into two parts 
at its origin in the sun or star, shall we get two infinities? — or shall we 
say, two halves of the infinite?" 

"We conceive of each as partaking the quality of infinity." 

"Now, let us cut out the diameter of the sun; or rather, — since 
this is what our successors in the school will do, — let us take a line 
of our earth's longitude which is equally unreal, and measure a degree 
of this thing which does not exist, and then divide it into equal parts 
which we will use as a measure or metre. This metre, which is still 
nothing, as I understand you, is infinitely divisible into points? and the 
point itself is infinitely small? Therefore we have the finite partaking 
the nature of the infinite?" 

"Undoubtedly!" 

"One step more, Mr. Abelard, if I do not weary you! Let me take 
three of these metres which do not exist, and place them so that the 
ends of one shall touch the ends of the others. May I ask what is that 
figure?" 

"I presume you mean it to be a triangle." 

"Precisely! and what sort of a triangle?" 

"An equilateral triangle, the sides of which measure one metre 
each." 

"Now let me take three more of these metres which do not exist, 
and construct another triangle which does not exist ; — are these two 
triangles or one triangle?" 

"They are most certainly one — a single concept of the only pos- 
sible equilateral triangle measuring one metre on each face." 

"You told us a moment ago that a universal could not exist wholly 
and exclusively in two individuals at once. Does not the universal 
by definition — the equilateral triangle measuring one metre on each 



ABfiLARD 297 

face — does it not exist wholly, in its integrity of essence, in each of 
the two triangles we have conceived?" 

" It does — as a conception." 

"I thank you! Now, although I fear wearying you, perhaps you 
will consent to let me add matter to mind. I have here on my desk 
an object not uncommon in nature, which I will ask you to describe." 

"It appears to be a crystal." 

"May I ask its shape?" 

"I should call it a regular octahedron." 

"That is, two pyramids, set base to base? making eight plane sur- 
faces, each a perfect equilateral triangle?" 

"Concede triangula (I grant the triangles)." 

"Do you know, perchance, what is this material which seems to 
give substantial existence to these eight triangles?" 

"I do not." 

"Nor I! nor does it matter, unless you conceive it to be the work 
of man?" 

" I do not claim it as man's work." 

"Whose, then?" 

"We believe all actual creation of matter, united with form, to be 
the work of God." 

"Surely not the substance of God himself? Perhaps you mean that 
this form — this octahedron — is a divine concept." 

"I understand such to be the doctrine of the Church." 

"Then it seems that God uses this concept habitually to create this 
very common crystal. One question more, and only one, if you will 
permit me to come to the point. Does the matter — the material — 
of which this crystal is made affect in any way the form — the nature, 
the soul — of the universal equilateral triangle as you see it bounding 
these eight plane surfaces?" 

"That I do not know, and do not think essential to decide. As far 
as these triangles are individual, they are made so by the will of God, 



298 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

and not by the substance you call triangle. The universal — the 
abstract right angle, or any other abstract form — is only an idea, a 
concept, to which reality, individuality, or what we might call energy 
is wanting. The only true energy, except man's free will, is God." 

"Very good, Mr. Abelard! we can now reach our issue. You affirm 
that, just as the line does not exist in space, although the eye sees 
little else in space, so the triangle does not exist in this crystal, al- 
though the crystal shows eight of them, each perfect. You are aware 
that on this line which does not exist, and its combination in this 
triangle which does not exist, rests the whole fabric of mathematics 
with all its necessary truths. In other words, you know that in this 
line, though it does not exist, is bound up the truth of the only branch 
of human knowledge which claims absolute certainty for human proc- 
esses. You admit that this line and triangle, which are mere figments 
of our human imagination, not only exist independent of us in the 
crystal, but are, as we suppose, habitually and invariably used by God 
Himself to give form to the matter contained within the planes of the 
crystal. Yet to this line and triangle you deny reality. To mathemati- 
cal truth, you deny compulsive force. You hold that an equilateral 
triangle may, to you and all other human individuals, be a right- 
angled triangle if you choose to imagine it so. Allow me to say, with- 
out assuming any claim to superior knowledge, that to me your logic 
results in a different conclusion. If you are compelled, at one point or 
another of the chain of being, to deny existence to a substance, surely 
it should be to the last and feeblest. I see nothing to hinder you from 
denying your own existence, which is, in fact, impossible to demon- 
strate. Certainly you are free, in logic, to argue that Socrates and 
Plato are mere names — that men and matter are phantoms and 
dreams. No one ever has proved or ever can prove the contrary. 
Infallibly, a great philosophical school will some day be founded on 
that assumption. I venture even to recommend it to your acute and 
sceptical mind ; but I cannot conceive how, by any process of reason- 



ABELARD 299 

ing, sensual or supersensual, you can reach the conclusion that the 
single form of truth — which instantly and inexorably compels our 
submission to its laws — is nothing." 

' Thus far, all was familiar ground; certainly at least as familiar as 
the Pons Asinorum; and neither of the two champions had need to 
feel ruffled in temper by the discussion. The real struggle began only at 
this point; for until this point was reached, both positions were about 
equally tenable. Abelard had hitherto rested quietly on the defensive, 
but Wilham's last thrust obliged him to strike in his turn, and he drew 
himself up for what, five hundred years later, was called the " Coup de 
Jarnac": — 

"I do not deny," he begins; "on the contrary, I affirm that the 
universal, whether we call it humanity, or equilateral triangle, has a 
sort of reality as a concept; that it is something; even a substance, if 
you insist upon it. Undoubtedly the sum of all individual men results 
in the concept of humanity. What I deny is that the concept results 
in the individual. You have correctly stated the essence of the point 
and the line as sources of our concept of the infinite ; what I deny is 
that they are divisions of the infinite. Universals cannot be divided; 
what is capable of division cannot be a universal. I admit the force of 
your analogy in the case of the crystal ; but I am obliged to point out to 
you that, if you insist on this analogy, you will bring yourself and me 
into flagrant contradiction with the fixed foundations of the Church. 
If the energy of the triangle gives form to the crystal, and the energy of 
the line gives reality to the triangle, and the energy of the infinite gives 
substance to the line, all energy at last becomes identical with the 
ultimate substance, God Himself. Socrates becomes God in small; 
Judas is identical with both; humanity is of the divine essence, and 
exists, wholly and undivided, in each of us. The equilateral triangle 
we call humanity exists, therefore, entire, identical, in you and me, as 
a subdivision of the infinite line, space, energy, or substance, which is 
God. I need not remind you that this is pantheism, and that if God is 



300 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

the only energy, human free will merges in God's free will ; the Church 
ceases to have a reason for existence ; man cannot be held responsible 
for his own acts, either to the Church or to the State; and finally, 
though very unwillingly, I must, in regard for my own safety, bring 
the subject to the attention of the Archbishop, which, as you know 
better than I, will lead to your seclusion, or worse." 

Whether Abelard used these precise words is nothing to the point. 
The words he left on record were equivalent to these. As translated by 
M. de Remusat from a manuscript entitled: "Glossulse magistri Petri 
Baelardi super Porphyrium," the phrase runs: ** A grave heresy is at 
the end of this doctrine; for, according to it, the divine substance 
which is recognized as admitting of no form, is necessarily identical 
with every substance in particular and with all substance in general." 
Even had he not stated the heresy so bluntly, his objection necessarily 
pushed William in face of it. Realism, when pressed, always led to 
pantheism. William of Champeaux and Bishop or Archbishop Hilde- 
bert were personal friends, and Hildebert's divine substance left no 
more room for human free will than Abelard saw in the geometric 
analogy imagined for William. Throughout the history of the Church 
for fifteen hundred years, whenever this theological point has been 
pressed against churchmen it has reduced them to evasion or to apol- 
ogy. Admittedly, the weak point of realism was its fatally pantheistic 
term. 

Of course, William consulted his friends in the Church, probably 
Archbishop Hildebcrt among the rest, before deciding whether to 
maintain or to abandon his ground, and the result showed that he was 
guided by their advice. Realism was the Roman arch — the only 
possible foundation for any Church ; because it assumed unity, and any 
other scheme was compelled to prove it, for a starting-point. Let us 
see, for a moment, what became of the dialogue, when pushed into 
theology, in order to reach some of the reasons which reduced William 
to tacit abandonment of a doctrine he could never have surrendered 



ABELARD 301 

unless under compulsion. That he was angry is sure, for Abelard, by 
thus thrusting theology into dialectics, had struck him a foul blow; and 
William knew Abelard well : — 

"Ah!" he would have rejoined; "you are quick, M. du Pallet, to 
turn what I offered as an analogy, into an argument of heresy against 
my person. You are at liberty to take that course if you choose, 
though I give you fair warning that it will lead you far. But now I 
must ask you still another question. This concept that you talk about 
— this image in the mind of man, of God, of matter; for I know not 
where to seek it — whether is it a reality or not? " 

"I hold it as, in a manner, real." 

"I want a categorical answer: — Yes or No!" 

"Distinguo! (I must qualify.)" 

" I will have no qualifications. A substance either is, or not. Choose!" 

To this challenge Abelard had the choice of answering Yes, or of 
answering No, or of refusing to answer at all. He seems to have done 
the last; but we suppose him to have accepted the wager of battle, and 
to answer : — 

"Yes, then!" 

"Good!" William rejoins; " now let us see how your pantheism dif- 
fers from mine. My triangle exists as a reality, or what science will call 
an energy, outside my mind, in God, and is impressed on my mind 
as it is on a mirror, like the triangle on the crystal, its energy giving 
form. Your triangle you say is also an energy, but an essence of my 
mind itself; you thrust it into the mind as an integral part of the mirror; 
identically the same concept, energy, or necessary truth which is in- 
herent in God. Whatever subterfuge you may resort to, sooner or 
later you have got to agree that your mind is identical with God's 
nature as far as that concept is concerned. Your pantheism goes 
further than mine. As a doctrine of the Real Presence peculiar to 
yourself, I can commend it to the Archbishop together with your 
delation of me." 



302 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

Supposing that Abelard took the opposite course, and answered : — 

"No! my concept is a mere sign." 

"A sign of what, in God's name!" 

"A sound! a word! a symbol! an echo only of my ignorance." 

"Nothing, then! So truth and virtue and charity do not exist at 
all. You suppose yourself to exist, but you have no means of knowing 
God; therefore, to you God does not exist except as an echo of your 
ignorance; and, what concerns you most, the Church does not exist 
except as your concept of certain individuals, whom you cannot regard 
as a unity, and who suppose themselves to believe in a Trinity which 
exists only as a sound, or a symbol. I will not repeat your words, M. 
du Pallet, outside this cloister, because the consequences to you would 
certainly be fatal; but it is only too clear that you are a materialist, 
and as such your fate must be decided by a Church Council, unless 
you prefer the stake by judgment of a secular court. 

In truth, pure nominalism — if, indeed, any one ever maintained 
it — afforded no cover whatever. Nor did Abelard's concept help the 
matter, although for want of a better refuge, the Church was often 
driven into it. Conceptualism was a device, like the false wooden 
roof, to cover and conceal an inherent weakness of construction. Unity 
either is, or is not. If soldiers, no matter in what number, can never 
make an army, and worshippers, though in millions, do not make a 
Church, and all humanity united would not necessarily constitute a 
State, equally little can their concepts, individual or united, constitute 
the one or the other. Army, Church, and State, each is an organic 
whole, complex beyond all possible addition of units, and not a con- 
cept at all, but rather an animal that thinks, creates, devours, and 
destroys. The attempt to bridge the chasm between multiplicity and 
unity is the oldest problem of philosophy, religion, and science, but 
the flimsiest bridge of all is the human concept, unless somewhere, 
within or beyond it, an energy not individual is hidden ; and in that 
case the old question instantly reappears: What is that energy? 



ABELARD 303 

Abelard would have done well to leave William alone, but Abelard 
was an adventurer, and William was a churchman. To win a victory 
over a churchman is not very difficult for an adventurer, and is always 
a tempting amusement, because the ambition of churchmen to shine in 
worldly contests is disciplined and checked by the broader interests of 
the Church : but the victory is usually sterile, and rarely harms the 
churchman. The Church cares for its own. Probably the bishops 
advised William not to insist on his doctrine, although every bishop 
may have held the same view. William allowed himself to be silenced 
without a judgment, and in that respect stands almost if not quite alone 
among schoolmen. The students divined that he had sold himself to 
the Church, and consequently deserted him. Very soon he received 
his reward in the shape of the highest dignity open to private ambition 
— a bishopric. As Bishop of Chalons-sur-Marne he made for himself 
a great reputation, which does not concern us, although it deeply 
concerned the unfortunate Abelard, for it happened, either by chance 
or design, that within a year or two after William established himself 
at Chalons, young Bernard of Citeaux chose a neighbouring diocese 
in which to establish a branch of the Cistercian Order, and Bishop 
William took so keen an interest in the success of Bernard as almost 
to claim equal credit for it. Clairvaux was, in a manner, William's 
creation, although not in his diocese, and yet, if there was a priest in 
all France who fervently despised the schools, it was young Bernard. 
William of Champeaux, the chief of schoolmen, could never have 
gained Bernard's affections. Bishop William of Chalons must have 
drifted far from dialectics into mysticism in order to win the support 
of Clairvaux, and train up a new army of allies who were to mark 
Abelard for an easy prey. 

Meanwhile Abelard pursued his course of triumph in the schools, 
and in due time turned from dialectics to theology, as every ambitious 
teacher could hardly fail to do. His affair with Heloise and their mar- 
riage seem to have occupied his time in 11 17 or 11 18, for they both 



304 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

retired into religious orders in 1119, and he resumed his lectures in 
1 120. With his passion for rule, he was fatally certain to attempt 
ruling the Church as he ruled the schools; and, as it was always enough 
for him that any point should be tender in order that he should press 
upon it, he instantly and instinctively seized on the most sensitive 
nerve of the Church system to wrench it into his service. He became 
a sort of apostle of the Holy Ghost. 

That the Trinity is a mystery was a law of theology so absolute as in 
a degree to hide the law of philosophy that the Trinity was meant as a 
solution of a greater mystery still. In truth, as a matter of philosophy, 
the Trinity was intended to explain the eternal and primary problem 
of the process by which unity could produce diversitv/Starting from 
unity alone, philosophers found themselves unable to stir hand or foot 
until they could account for duality. To the common, ignorant peasant, 
no such trouble occurred, for he knew the Trinity in its simpler form 
as the first condition of life, like time and space and force. No human 
being was so stupid as not to understand that the father, mother, 
and child made a trinity, returning into each other, and although 
every father, every mother, and every child, from the dawn of man's 
intelligence, had asked why, and had never received an answer more 
intelligible to them than to philosphers, they never showed difficulty 
in accepting that trinity as a fact. They might even, in their bene- 
ficent blindness, ask the Church why that trinity, which had satisfied 
the Egyptians for five or ten thousand years, was not good enough 
for churchmen. They themselves were doing their utmost, though 
unconsciously, to identify the Holy Ghost with the Mother, while 
philosophy insisted on excluding the human symbol precisely because 
it was human and led back to an infinite series. Philosophy required 
three units to start from; it posed the equilateral triangle, not the 
straight line, as the foundation of its deometry. The first straight line, 
infinite in extension, must be assumed, and its reflection engendered 
the second, but whence came the third? Under protest, philosophy 



ABELARD 305 

was compelled to accept the symbol of Father and Son as a matter of 
faith, but, if the relation of Father and Son were accepted for the two 
units which reflected each other, what relation expressed the Holy 
Ghost? In philosophy, the product of two units was not a third unit, 
but diversity, multiplicity, infinity. The subject was, for that reason, 
better handled by the Arabs, whose reasoning worked back on the 
Christian theologists and made the point more delicate still. Common 
people, like women and children and ourselves, could never under- 
stand the Trinity ; naturally, intelligent people understood it still less, 
but for them it did not matter; they did not need to understand it pro- 
vided their neighbours would leave it alone. 

The mass of mankind wanted something nearer to them than either 
the Father or the Son; they wanted the Mother, and the Church tried, 
in what seems to women and children and ourselves rather a feeble 
way, to give the Holy Ghost, as far as possible, the Mother's attributes 
— Love, Charity, Grace ; but in spite of conscientious effort and un- 
swerving faith, the Holy Ghost remained to the mass of Frenchmen 
somewhat apart, feared rather than loved. The sin against the Holy 
Ghost was a haunting spectre, for no one knew what else it was. 

Naturally the Church, and especially its official theologists, took an 
instinctive attitude of defence whenever a question on this subject 
was asked, and were thrown into a flutter of irritation whenever an 
answer was suggested. No man likes to have his intelligence or good 
faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself. The dis- 
tinguishing essence of the Holy Ghost, as a theological substance, was 
its mystery. That this mystery should be touched at all was annoying 
to every one who knew the dangers that lurked behind the veil, but" 
that it should be freely handled before audiences of laymen by persons 
of doubtful character was impossible. Such license must end in dis- 
crediting the whole Trinity under pretence of making it intelligible. 

Precisely this license was what Abelard took, and on it he chose to 
insist. He said nothing heretical; he treated the Holy Ghost with 



306 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

almost exaggerated respect, as though other churchmen did not quite 
appreciate its merits; but he would not let it alone, and the Church 
dreaded every moment lest, with his enormous influence in the schools, 
he should raise a new storm by his notorious indiscretion. Yet so long 
as he merely lectured, he was not molested; only when he began to 
publish his theology did the Church interfere. Then a council held at 
Soissons in 1 121 abruptly condemned his book in block, without reading 
it, without specifying its errors, and without hearing his defence; 
obliged him to throw the manuscript into the fire with his own hands, 
and finally shut him up in a monastery. 

He had invited the jurisdiction by taking orders, but even the 
Church was shocked by the summary nature of the judgment, which 
seems to have been quite irregular. In fact, the Church has never 
known what it was that the council condemned. The latest great work 
on the Trinity, by the Jesuit Father de Regnon, suggests that Abe- 
lard's fault was in applying to the Trinity his theory of concepts. 
"Yes!" he says; "the mystery is explained; the key of conceptualism 
has opened the tabernacle, and Saint Bernard was right in saying that, 
thanks to Abelard, every one can penetrate it and contemplate it at 
his ease; ' even the graceless, even the uncircumcised.' Yes! the Trinity 
is explained, but after the manner of Sabellians. For to identify the 
Persons in the terms of human concepts is, in the same stroke, to 
destroy their * subsistances propres.'" 

Although the Saviour seems to have felt no compunctions about 
identifying the persons of the Trinity in the terms of human concepts, 
it is clear that tourists and heretics had best leave the Church to deal 
with its " subsistances propres," and with its own members, in its own 
way. In sum, the Church preferred to stand firm on the Roman arch, 
and the architects seem now inclined to think it was right ; that scho- 
lastic science and the pointed arch proved to be failures. In the twelfth 
century the world may have been rough, but it was not stupid. The 
Council of Soissons was held while the architects and sculptors were 



ABELARD 307 

building the west porch of Chartres and the aquilon at Mont-Saint- 
Michel. Averroes was born at Cordova in 1126; Omar Khayydm died 
at Naishapur in 1123. Poetry and metaphysics owned the world, and 
their quarrel with theology was a private, family dispute. Very soon the 
tide turned decisively in Abelard's favour. Suger, a political prelate, be- 
came minister of the King, and in March, 1 122, Abbot of Saint-Denis. 
In both capacities he took the part of Abelard, released him from 
restraint, and even restored to him liberty of instruction, at least be- 
yond the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Paris. Abelard then took a line of 
conduct singularly parallel with that of Bernard. Quitting civilized life 
he turned wholly to religion. "When the agreement," he said, "had 
been executed by both parties to it, in presence of the King and his 
ministers, I next retired within the territory of Troyes, upon a desert 
spot which I knew, and on a piece of ground given me by certain per- 
sons, I built, with the consent of the bishop of the diocese, a sort of 
oratory of reeds and thatch, which I placed under the invocation of the 
Holy Trinity. . . . Founded at first in the name of the Holy Trinity, 
then placed under its invocation, it was called ' Paraclete' in memory 
of my having come there as a fugitive and in my despair having found 
some repose in the consolations of divine grace. This denomination 
was received by many with great astonishment, and some attacked it 
with violence under pretext that it was not permitted to consecrate a 
church specially to the Holy Ghost any more than to God the Father, 
but that, according to ancient usage, it must be dedicated either to the 
Son alone or to the Trinity." 

The spot is still called Paraclete, near Nogent-sur-Seine, in the 
parish of Quincey about halfway between Fontainebleau and Troyes. 
The name Paraclete as applied to the Holy Ghost meant the Consoler, 
the Comforter, the Spirit of Love and Grace ; as applied to the oratory 
by Abelard it meant a renewal of his challenge to theologists, a separa- 
tion of the Persons in the Trinity, a vulgarization of the mystery; and, 
as his story frankly says, it was so received by many. The spot was 



308 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

not so remote but that his scholars could follow him, and he Invited 
them to do so. They came in great numbers, and he lectured to them. 
"In body I was hidden In this spot; but my renown overran the whole 
world and filled it with my word." Undoubtedly Abelard taught 
theology, and, In defiance of the council that had condemned him, 
attempted to define the persons of the Trinity. For this purpose he 
had fallen on a spot only fifty or sixty miles from Clairvaux where 
Bernard was inspiring a contrary spirit of religion ; he placed himself on 
the direct line between Clairvaux and Its source at CIteaux near Dijon; 
indeed, If he had sought for a spot as central as possible to the active 
movement of the Church and the time, he could have hit on none more 
convenient and conspicuous unless It were the city of Troyes Itself, 
the capital of Champagne, some thirty miles away. The proof that he 
meant to be aggressive Is furnished by his own account of the conse- 
quences. Two rivals, he says, one of whom seems to have been Ber- 
nard of Clairvaux, took the field against him, "and succeeded In excit- 
ing the hostility of certain ecclesiastical and secular authorities, by 
charging monstrous things, not only against my faith, but also against 
my manner of life, to such a point as to detach from me some of my 
principal friends ; even those who preserved some affection for me dared 
no longer display it, for fear. God is my witness that I never heard of 
the union of an ecclesiastical assembly without thinking that Its ob- 
ject was my condemnation." The Church had good reason, for Abe- 
lard's conduct defied discipline; but far from showing harshness, the 
Church this time showed a true spirit of conciliation most creditable 
to Bernard. Deeply as the Cistercians disliked and distrusted Abe- 
lard, they did not violently suppress him, but tacitly consented to let 
the authorities buy his silence with Church patronage. 

The transaction passed through Suger's hands, and offered an ordi- 
nary example of political customs as old as history. An abbey In 
Brittany became vacant; at a hint from the Duke Conan, which may 
well be supposed to have been suggested from Paris, the monks chose 



ABfiLARD 309 

Abelard as their new abbot, and sent some of their number to Suger 
to request permission for Abelard, who was a monk of Saint-Denis, 
to become Abbot of Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys, near Vannes, in Brittany. 
Suger probably intimated to Abelard, with a certain degree of au- 
thority, that he had better accept. Abelard, "struck with terror, and 
as it were under the menace of a thunderbolt," accepted. Of course 
the dignity was in effect banishment and worse, and was so understood 
on all sides. The Abbaye-de-Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys, though less iso- 
lated than Mont-Saint- Michel, was not an agreeable winter residence. 
Though situated in Abelard's native province of Brittany, only sixty 
or eighty miles from his birthplace, it was for him a prison with the 
ocean around it and a singularly wild people to deal with ; but he could 
have endured his lot with contentment, had not discipline or fear or 
pledge compelled him to hold his tongue. From 1 125, when he was sent 
to Brittany until 1135 when he reappeared in Paris, he never opened 
his mouth to lecture. "Never, as God is my witness, — never would I 
have acquiesced in such an offer, had it not been to escape, no matter 
how, from the vexations with which I was incessantly overwhelmed." 
A great career in the Church was thus opened for him against his 
will, and if he did not die an archbishop it was not wholly the fault 
of the Church. Already he was a great prelate, the equal in rank of the 
Abbe Suger, himself, of Saint-Denis; of Peter the Venerable of Cluny; 
of Bernard of Clairvaux. He was in a manner a peer of the realm. 
Almost immediately he felt the advantages of the change. Barely 
two years passed when, in 1 127, the Abbe Suger, in reforming his sub- 
ordinate Abbey of Argenteuil, was obliged to disturb Heloise, then a 
sister in that congregation. Abelard was warned of the necessity that 
his wife should be protected, and with the assistance of every one con- 
cerned, he was allowed to establish his wife at the Paraclete as head of 
a religious sisterhood. "I returned there; I invited H61oise to come 
there with the nuns of her community; and when they arrived, I made 
them the entire donation of the oratory and its dependencies. . . . The 



310 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

bishops cherished her as their daughter; the abbots as their sister; 
the laymen as their mother." This was merely the beginning of her 
favour and of his. For ten years they were both of them petted chil- 
dren of the Church. 

The formal establishment of Heloise at the Paraclete took place in 
1 129. In February, 11 30, on the death of the Pope at Rome, a schism 
broke out, and the cardinals elected two popes, one of whom took the 
name of Innocent II, and appealed for support to France. Suger saw 
a great political opportunity and used it. The heads of the French 
Church agreed in supporting Innocent, and the King summoned a 
Church council at Etampes to declare its adhesion. The council met 
in the late summer; Bernard of Clairvaux took the lead; Peter the 
Venerable, Suger of Saint-Denis, and the Abbot of Saint-Gildas-de- 
Rhuys supported him; Innocent himself took refuge at Cluny in Octo- 
ber, and on January 20, 1131, he stopped at the Benedictine Abbey of 
Morigny. The Chronicle of the monastery, recording the abbots 
present on this occasion, — the Abbot of Morigny itself, of Fever- 
sham; of Saint-Lucien of Beauvais, and so forth, — added especially: 
"Bernard of Clairvaux, who was then the most famous pulpit orator 
in France; and Peter Abelard, Abbot of Saint-Gildas, also a monk and 
the most eminent master of the schools to which the scholars of almost 
all the Latin races flowed." 

Innocent needed popular support; Bernard and Abelard were the 
two leaders of popular opinion in France. To attach them, Innocent 
could refuse nothing. Probably Abelard remained with Innocent, but 
in any case Innocent gave him, at Auxerre, in the following Novem- 
ber, a diploma, granting to Heloise, prioress of the Oratory of the Holy 
Trinity, all rights of property over whatever she might possess, against 
all assailants; which proves Abelard's favour. At this time he seems to 
have taken great interest in the new sisterhood. " I made them more 
frequent visits, ' ' he said , " in order to work for their benefit. ' ' He worked 
so earnestly for their benefit that he scandalized the neighbourhood 



ABELARD 311 

and had to argue at unnecessary length his innocence of evil. He went 
so far as to express a wish to take refuge among them and to abandon 
his abbey in Brittany. He professed to stand in terror of his monks; 
he excommunicated them ; they paid no attention to him ; he appealed 
to the Pope, his friend, and Innocent sent a special legate to enforce 
their submission ''in presence of the Count and the Bishops." 

Even since that, they would not keep quiet. And quite recently, since the 
expulsion of those of whom I have spoken, when I returned to the abbey, aban- 
doning myself to the rest of the brothers who inspired me with less distrust, I 
found them even worse than the others. It was no longer a question of poison; it 
was the dagger that they now sharpened against my breast. I had great difficulty 
in escaping from them under the guidance of one of the neighbouring lords. Simi- 
lar perils menace me still and every day I see the sword raised over my head. Even 
at table I can hardly breathe. . . . This is the torture that I endure every moment 
of the day; I, a poor monk, raised to the prelacy, becoming more miserable in 
becoming more great, that by my example the ambitious may learn to curb their 
greed. 

With this, the "Story of Calamity" ends. The allusions to Inno- 
cent II seem to prove that it was written not earlier than 1132; the 
confession of constant and abject personal fear suggests that it was 
written under the shock caused by the atrocious murder of the Prior 
of Saint- Victor by the nephews of the Archdeacon of Paris, who had 
also been subjected to reforms. This murder was committed a few 
miles outside of the walls of Paris, on August 20, 1133. The "Story 
of Calamity" is evidently a long plea for release from the restraints 
imposed on its author by his position in the prelacy and the tacit, or 
possibly the express, contract he had made, or to which he had sub- 
mitted, in 1 125. This plea was obviously written in order to serve one 
of two purposes : — either to be placed before the authorities whose 
consent alone could relieve Abelard from his restraints; or to justify 
him in throwing off the load of the Church, and resuming the profes- 
sion of schoolman. Supposing the second explanation, the date of 
the paper would be more or less closely fixed by John of Salisbury, who 
coming to Paris as a student, in 1136, found Abelard lecturing on the 



312 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

Mont-Salnte-Genevieve; that is to say, not under the license of the 
Bishop of Paris or his Chancellor, but independently, in a private school 
of his own, outside the walls. " I attached myself to the Palatine Peri- 
patician who then presided on the hill of Sainte-Genevieve, the doc- 
tor illustrious, admired by all. There, at his feet, I received the first 
elements of the dialectic art, and according to the measure of my poor 
understanding I received with all the avidity of my soul everything 
that came from his mouth." 

This explanation is hardly reasonable, for no prelate who was 
not also a temporal lord would have dared throw off his official duties 
without permission from his superiors. In Abelard's case the only 
superior to whom he could apply, as Abbot of Saint-Gildas in Brittany, 
was probably the Pope himself. In the year 1135 the moment was 
exceedingly favourable for asking privileges. Innocent, driven from 
Rome a second time, had summoned a council at Pisa for May 30 to 
help him. Louis-le-Gros and his minister Suger gave at first no sup- 
port to this council, and were overruled by Bernard of Clairvaux who 
in a manner drove them into giving the French clergy permission to 
attend. The principal archbishops, a number of bishops, and sixteen 
abbots went to Pisa in May, 1135, and some one of them certainly 
asked Innocent for favours on behalf of Abelard, which the Pope 
granted. 

The proof is a papal bull, dated in 1 136, in favour of Heloise, giving 
her the rank and title of Abbess, accompanied by another giving to the 
Oratory of the Holy Trinity the rank and name of Monastery of the 
Paraclete, a novelty in Church tradition so extraordinary or so shock- 
ing that it still astounds churchmen. With this excessive mark of 
favour Innocent could have felt little difficulty in giving Abelard the 
permission to absent himself from his abbey, and with this permission 
in his hands Abelard might have lectured on dialectics to John of 
Salisbury in the summer or autumn of 1136. He did not, as far as 
known, resume lectures on theology. 



AB£LARD 313 

Such success might have turned heads much better balanced than 
that of Abelard. With the support of the Pope and at least one of the 
most prominent cardinals, and with relations at court with the minis- 
ters of Louis-le-Gros, Abelard seemed to himself as strong as Bernard 
of Clairvaux, and a more popular champion of reform. The year 1 137, 
which has marked a date for so many great points in our travels, 
marked also the moment of Abelard 's greatest vogue. The victory of 
Aristotle and the pointed arch seemed assured when Suger effected 
the marriage of the young Prince Louis to the heiress Eleanor of 
Guienne. The exact moment was stamped on the fagade of his ex- 
quisite creation, the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis, finished in 1140 
and still in part erect. From Saint-Denis to Saint-Sulpice was but a 
step. Louis-le-Grand seems to stand close in succession to Louis-le- 
Gros. 

Fortunately for tourists, the world, restless though it might be, 
could not hurry, and Abelard was to know of the pointed arch very 
little except its restlessness. Just at the apex of his triumph, August i , 
1 1 37, Louis-le-Gros died. Six months afterwards the anti-pope also 
died, the schism ended, and Innocent II needed Abelard's help no more. 
Bernard of Clairvaux became Pope and King at once. Both Innocent 
and Louis-le- Jeune were in a manner his personal creations. The King's 
brother Henry, next in succession, actually became a monk at Clair- 
vaux not long afterwards. Even the architecture told the same story, 
for at Saint-Denis, though the arch might simulate a point, the old 
Romanesque lines still assert as firmly as ever their spiritual control. 
The fleche that gave the fagade a new spirit was not added until 12 15, 
which marks Abelard's error in terms of time. 

Once arrived at power, Bernard made short work of all that tried 
to resist him. During 1139 he seems to have been too busy or too 
ill to take up the affair of Abelard, but in March, 1140, the at- 
tack was opened in a formal letter from William of Saint-Thierry, 
who was Bernard's closest friend, bringing charges against Abelard 



314 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

before Bernard and the Bishop of Chartres. The charges were simple 

enough : — 

Pierre Ab61ard seized the moment, when all the masters of ecclesiastical doc- 
trine have disappeared from the scene of the world, to conquer a place apart, for 
himself, in the schools, and to create there an exclusive domination. He treats 
Holy Scripture as though it were dialectics. It is a matter with him of per- 
sonal invention and annual novelties. He is the censor and not the disciple of the 
faith ; the corrector and not the imitator of the authorized masters. 

In substance, this is all. The need of action was even simpler. 
Abelard's novelties were becoming a danger ; they affected not only the 
schools, but also even the Curia at Rome. Bernard must act because 
there was no one else to act: "This man fears you; he dreads you! 
if you shut your eyes, whom will he fear? . . . The evil has become 
too public to allow a correction limited to amicable discipline and secret 
warning." In fact, Abelard's works were flying about Europe in every 
direction, and every year produced a novelty. One can still read them 
in M. Cousin's collected edition; among others, a volume on ethics: 
"Ethica, seu Scito teipsum"; on theology in general, an epitome; a 
"Dialogus inter Philosophum, Judseum et Christianum"; and, what 
was perhaps the most alarming of all, an abstract of quotations from 
standard authorities, on the principle of the parallel column, showing 
the fatal contradictions of the authorized masters, and entitled "Sic 
et Non" ! Not one of these works but dealt with sacred matters in a 
spirit implying that the Essence of God was better understood by 
Pierre du Pallet than by the whole array of bishops and prelates in 
Europe! Had Bernard been fortunate enough to light upon the "Story 
of Calamity," which must also have been in existence, he would have 
found there Abelard's own childlike avowal that he taught theology 
because his scholars "said that they did not want mere words; that 
one can believe only what one understands; and that it is ridiculous 
to preach to others what one understands no better than they do." 
Bernard himself never charged Abelard with any presumption equal 
to this. Bernard said only that "he sees nothing as an enigma, nothing 



ABELARD 315 

as in a mirror, but looks on everything face to face." If this had been 
all, even Bernard could scarcely have complained. For several thou- 
sand years mankind has stared Infinity in the face without pretending 
to be the wiser; the pretension of Abelard was that, by his dialectic 
method, he could explain the Infinite, while all other theologists talked 
mere words ; and by way of proving that he had got to the bottom 
of the matter, he laid down the ultimate law of the universe as his 
starting-point: ''All that God does," he said, ''He wills necessarily 
and does it necessarily; for His goodness is such that it pushes Him 
necessarily to do all the good He can, and the best He can, and the 
quickest He can. . . . Therefore it is of necessity that God willed and 
made the world." Pure logic admitted no contingency; it was 
bound to be necessitarian or ceased to be logical ; but the result, as 
Bernard understood it, was that Abelard's world, being the best and 
only possible, need trouble itself no more about God, or Church, or 
man. 

Strange as the paradox seems, Saint Bernard and Lord Bacon, 
though looking at the world from opposite standpoints, agreed in this: 
that the scholastic method was false and mischievous, and that the 
longer it was followed, the greater was its mischief. Bernard thought 
that because dialectics led wrong, therefore faith led right. He saw no 
alternative, and perhaps in fact there was none. If he had lived a 
century later, he would have said to Thomas Aquinas what he said to 
a schoolman of his own day: " If you had once tasted true food," — if 
you knew what true religion is, — "how quick you would leave those 
Jew makers of books (literatoribus judaeis) to gnaw their crusts by 
themselves!" Locke or Hume might perhaps still have resented a 
little the " literator judseus," but Faraday or Clerk-Maxwell would 
have expressed the same opinion with only the change of a word: 
" If the twelfth century had once tasted true science, how quick they 
would have dropped Avicenna and Averroes!" Science admits that 
Bernard's disbelief in scholasticism was well founded, whatever it may 



3i6 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

think of his reasons. The only point that remains Is personal : Which Is 
the more sympathetic, Bernard or Abelard? 

The Church feels no doubt, but Is a bad witness. Bernard Is not a 
character to be taken or rejected In a lump. He was many-sided, and 
even toward Abelard he showed more than one surface. He wanted no 
unnecessary scandals In the Church ; he had too many that were not of 
his seeking. He seems to have gone through the forms of friendly 
negotiation with Abelard although he could have required nothing 
less than Abelard's submission and return to Brittany, and silence; 
terms which Abelard thought worse than death. On Abelard's refusal, 
Bernard began his attack. We know, from the "Story of Calamity," 
what Bernard's party could not have certainly known then, — the 
abject terror Into which the very thought of a council had for twenty 
years thrown Abelard whenever he was threatened with it; and in 1 140 
he saw it to be inevitable. He preferred to face it with dignity, and 
requested to be heard at a council to meet at Sens in June. One cannot 
admit that he felt the shadow of a hope to escape. At the utmost he 
could have dreamed of nothing more than a hearing. Bernard's friends, 
who had a lively fear of his dialectics, took care to shut the door on 
even this hope. The council was carefully packed and overawed. The 
King was present; archbishops, bishops, abbots, and other prelates 
by the score; Bernard acted in person as the prosecuting attorney; the 
public outside were stimulated to threaten violence. Abelard had less 
chance of a judicial hearing than he had had at Soissons twenty years 
before. He acted with a proper sense of their dignity and his own by 
simply appearing and entering an appeal to Rome. The council paid 
no attention to the appeal, but passed to an immediate condemnation. 
His friends said that it was done after dinner; that when the volume 
of Abelard's "Theology" was produced and the clerk began to read it 
aloud, after the first few sentences the bishops ceased attention, talked, 
joked, laughed, stamped their feet, got angry, and at la^t went to sleep. 
They were waked only to growl " Damnamus — namus," and so made 



ABELARD 317 

an end. The story may be true, for all prelates, even in the twelfth 
century, were not Bernards of Clairvaux or Peters of Cluny; all drank 
wine, and all were probably sleepy after dinner; while Abelard's writ- 
ings are, for the most part, exceedingly hard reading. The clergy knew 
quite well what they were doing; the judgment was certain long in 
advance, and the council was called only to register it. Political trials 
were usually mere forms. 

The appeal to Rome seems to have been taken seriously by Ber- 
nard, which is surprising unless the character of Innocent II inspired 
his friends with doubts unknown to us. Innocent owed everything to 
Bernard, while Abelard owed everything to Innocent. The Pope was 
not in a position to alienate the French Church or the French King. 
To any one who knows only what is now to be known, Bernard seems 
to have been sure of the Curia, yet he wrote in a tone of excitement as 
though he feared Abelard's influence there even more than at home. 
He became abusive ; Abelard was a crawling viper (coluber tortuosus) 
who had come out of his hole (egressus est de caverna sua) , and after 
the manner of a hydra (in similitudinem hydrse), after having one 
head cut off at Soissons, had thrown out seven more. He was a monk 
without rule; a prelate without responsibility; an abbot without dis- 
cipline; "disputing with boys; conversing with women." The charges 
in themselves seem to be literally true, and would not in some later 
centuries have been thought very serious ; neither faith nor morals were 
impugned. On the other hand, Abelard never affected or aspired to be 
a saint, while Bernard always affected to judge the acts and motives 
of his fellow-creatures from a standpoint of more than worldly charity. 
Bernard had no right to Abelard's vices; he claimed to be judged by 
a higher standard ; but his temper was none of the best, and his pride 
was something of the worst ; which gave to Peter the Venerable occa- 
sion for turning on him sharply with a rebuke that cut to the bone: 
"You perform all the difficult religious duties," wrote Peter to the 
saint who wrought miracles; "you fast; you watch; you suffer; but you 



3i8 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

will not endure the easy ones — you do not love (non vis levia ferre, 
ut diligas)." 

This was the end of Abelard. Of course the Pope confirmed the 
judgment, and even hurried to do so in order that he might not be 
obliged to give Abelard a hearing. The judgment was not severe, as 
judgments went; indeed, it amounted to little more than an order to 
keep silence, and, as it happened, was never carried into effect. Abe- 
lard, at best a nervous invalid, started for Rome, but stopped at 
Cluny, perhaps the most agreeable stopping-place in Europe. Person- 
ally he seems to have been a favourite of Abbot Peter the Venerable, 
whose love for Bernard was not much stronger than Abelard's or 
Suger's. Bernard was an excessively sharp critic, and spared worldli- 
ness, or what he thought lack of spirituality, in no prelate whatever; 
Clairvaux existed for nothing else, poHtically, than as a rebuke to them 
all, and Bernard's enmity was their bond of union. Under the pro- 
tection of Peter the Venerable, the most amiable figure of the twelfth 
century, and in the most agreeable residence in JEurope, Abelard re- 
mained unmolested at Cluny, occupied, as is believed, in writing or 
revising his treatises, in defiance of the council. He died there two 
years later, April 21, 1142, in full communion, still nominal Abbot of 
Saint-Gildas, and so distinguished a prelate that Peter the Venerable 
thought himself obliged to write a charming letter to H^loi'se at the 
Paraclete not far away, condoling with heron the loss of a husband who 
was the Socrates, the Aristotle, the Plato, of France and the West; 
who, if among logicians he had rivals, had no master; who was the 
prince of study, learned, eloquent, subtle, penetrating; who overcame 
everything by the force of reason, and was never so great as when he 
passed to true philosophy, that of Christ. 

All this was in Latin verses, and seems sufificiently strong, consider- 
ing that Abelard's philosophy had been so recently and so emphatically 
condemned by the entire Church, including Peter the Venerable him- 
self. The twelfth century had this singular charm of liberty in practice, 



ABELARD 319 

just as its architecture knew no mathematical formula of precision; 
but Peter's letter to Heloise went further still, and rang with absolute 
passion ; — 

Thus, dear and venerable sister in God, he to whom you are united, after your 
tie in the flesh, by the better and stronger bond of the divine love ; he, with whom, 
and under whom, you have served the Lord, the Lord now takes, in your place, 
like another you, and warms in His bosom; and, for the day of His coming, when 
shall sound the voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God descending from 
heaven. He keeps him to restore him to you by His grace. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE MYSTICS 

THE schoolmen of the twelfth century thought they could reach 
God by reason; the Council of Sens, guided by Saint Bernard, 
replied that the effort was futile and likely to be mischievous. The 
council made little pretence of knowing or caring what method Abe- 
lard followed; they condemned any effort at all on that line; and no 
sooner had Bernard silenced the Abbot of Saint-Gildas for innova- 
tion than he turned about and silenced the Bishop of Poitiers for con- 
servatism. Neither in the twelfth nor in any other century could three 
men have understood alike the meaning of Gilbert de la Poree, who 
seems to one high authority unworthy of notice and to another, worthy 
of an elaborate but quite unintelligible commentary. When M. Rous- 
selet and M. Haureau judge so differently of a voluminous writer, the 
Council at Rheims which censured Bishop Gilbert in 1148 can hardly 
have been clear in mind. One dare hazard no more than a guess at 
Gilbert's offence, but the guess is tolerably safe that he, like Abelard, 
insisted on discussing and analyzing the Trinity. Gilbert seems to have 
been a rigid realist, and he reduced to a correct syllogism the idea of 
the ultimate substance — God. To make theology a system capable 
of scholastic definition he had to suppose, behind the active deity, a 
passive abstraction, or absolute substance without attributes ; and then 
the attributes — justice, mercy, and the rest — fell into rank as 
secondary substances. "Formam dei divinitatem appellant." Ber- 
nard answered him by insisting with his usual fiery conviction that 
the Church should lay down the law, once for all, and inscribe it with 
iron and diamond, that Divinity — Divine Wisdom — is God. In 
philosophy and science the question seems to be still open. Whether 



THE MYSTICS 321 

anything ultimate exists — whether substance is more than a complex 
of elements — whether the "thing in itself " is a reality or a name — is 
a question that Faraday and Clerk- Maxwell seem to answer as Ber- 
nard did, while Haeckel answers it as Gilbert did; but in theology 
even a heretic wonders how a doubt was possible. The absolute sub- 
stance behind the attributes seems to be pure Spinoza. 

This supposes that the heretic understands what Gilbert or Haeckel 
meant, which is certainly a mistake ; but it is possible that he may see 
in part what Bernard meant and this is enough if it is all. Abelard's 
necessitarianism and Gilbert's Spinozism, if Bernard understood 
them right, were equally impossible theology, and the Church could 
by no evasion escape the necessity of condemning both. Unfortunately, 
Bernard could not put his foot down so roughly on the schools without 
putting it on Aristotle as well; and, for at least sixty years after the 
Council of Rheims, Aristotle was either tacitly or expressly prohibited. 
One cannot stop to explain why Aristotle himself would have been first 
to forbid the teaching of what was called by his name in the Middle 
Ages; but you are bound to remember that this period between 11 40 
and 1200 was that of Transition architecture and art. One must go 
to Noyon, Soissons, and Laon to study the Church that trampled on 
the schools; one must recall how the peasants of Normandy and the 
Chartrain were crusading for the Virgin in 1145, and building her 
fleches at Chartres and Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives while Bernard was 
condemning Gilbert at Rheims in 1148; we must go to the poets to 
see what they all meant by it; but the sum is an emotion — clear and 
strong as love and much clearer than logic — whose charm lies in its 
unstable balance. The Transition is the equilibrium between the 
love of God — which is faith — and the logic of God — which is rea- 
son; between the round arch and the pointed. One may not be sure 
which pleases most, but one need not be harsh toward people who 
think that the moment of balance is exquisite. The last and highest 
moment is seen at Chartres, where, in 1200, the charm depends on the 



322 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

constant doubt whether emotion or science is uppermost. At Amiens, 
doubt ceases ; emotion is trained in school ; Thomas Aquinas reigns. 

Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas of Aquino were both artists, — 
very great artists, if the Church pleases, — and one need not decide 
which was the greater; but between them is a region of pure emotion 
— of poetry and art — which is more interesting than either. In every 
age man has been apt to dream uneasily, rolling from side to side, beat- 
ing against imaginary bars, unless, tired out, he has sunk into indif- 
ference or scepticism. Religious minds prefer scepticism. The true 
saint is a profound sceptic; a total disbeliever in human reason, who 
has more than once joined hands on this ground with some who were 
at best sinners. Bernard was a total disbeliever in scholasticism; so 
was Voltaire. Bernard brought the society of his time to share his 
scepticism, but could give the society no other intellectual amusement 
to relieve its restlessness. His crusade failed; his ascetic enthusiasm 
faded; God came no nearer. If there was in all France, between 1140 
and 1200, a more typical Englishman of the future Church of England 
type than John of Salisbury, he has left no trace; and John wrote a 
description of his time which makes a picturesque contrast with the 
picture painted by Abelard, his old master, of the century at its 
beginning. John weighed ^belard and the schools against Bernard and 
the cloister, and coolly concluded that the way to truth led rather 
through Citeaux, which brought him to Chartres as Bishop in 1176, 
and to a mild scepticism in faith. " I prefer to doubt," he said, ''rather 
than rashly define what is hidden." The battle with the schools had 
then resulted only in creating three kinds of sceptics: — the disbe- 
lievers in human reason ; the passive agnostics ; and the sceptics proper, 
who would have been atheists had they dared. The first class was rep- 
resented by the School of Saint- Victor ; the second by John of Salis- 
bury himself; the third, by a class of schoolmen whom he called Cor- 
nificii, as though they made a practice of inventing horns of dilemma 
on which to fix their opponents; as, for example, they asked whether 



THE MYSTICS 323 

a pig which was led to market was led by the man or the cord. One 
asks instantly: What cord? — whether Grace, for instance, or Free 
Will? 

Bishop John used the science he had learned in the school only to 
reach the conclusion that, if philosophy were a science at all, its best 
practical use was to teach charity — love. Even the early, superficial 
debates of the schools, in 1100-50, had so exhausted the subject that 
the most intelligent men saw how little was to be gained by pursuing 
further those lines of thought. The twelfth century had already reached 
the point where the seventeenth century stood when Descartes re- 
newed the attempt to give a solid, philosophical basis for deism by his 
celebrated "Cogi to, ergo sum." Although that ultimate fact seemed 
new to Europe when Descartes revived it as the starting-point of his 
demonstration, it was as old and familiar as Saint Augustine to the 
twelfth century, and as little conclusive as any other assumption of 
the Ego or the Non-Ego. The schools argued, according to their tastes, 
from unity to multiplicity, or from multiplicity to unity; but what 
they wanted was to connect the two. They tried realism and found 
that it led to pantheism. They tried nominalism and found that it 
ended in materialism. They attempted a compromise in conceptualism 
which begged the whole question. Then they lay down, exhausted. 
In the seventeenth century the same violent struggle broke out again, 
and wrung from Pascal the famous outcry of despair in which the 
French language rose, perhaps for the last time, to the grand style of 
the twelfth century. To the twelfth century it belongs; to the century 
of faith and simplicity; not to the mathematical certainties of Des- 
cartes and Leibnitz and Newton, or to the mathematical abstractions 
of Spinoza. Descartes had proclaimed his famous conceptual proof of 
God: " I am conscious of myself, and must exist; I am conscious of God 
and He must exist." Pascal wearily replied that it was not God he 
doubted, but logic. He was tortured by the impossibility of rejecting 
man's reason by reason; unconsciously sceptical, he forced himself to 



324 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



disbelieve in himself rather than admit a doubt of God. Man had 
tried to prove God, and had failed: "The metaphysical proofs of 
God are so remote (eloignees) from the reasoning of men, and so con- 
tradictory (impliquees, far-fetched) that they make little impression; 
and even if they served to convince some people, it would only be 
during the instant that they see the demonstration; an hour after- 
wards they fear to have deceived themselves." Moreover, this kind 
of proof could lead only to a speculative knowledge, and to know 
God only in that way was not to know Him at all. The only way to 
reach God was to deny the value of reason, and to deny reason was 
scepticism : — 



En voyant I'aveugleinent et la misere de 
rhomme et ces contrarietes etonnantes qui se 
decouvrent dans sa nature; et regardant tout 
I'univers muet, et Thomme sans lumiere, 
abandonne a lui-meme et comme egare dans 
ce recoin de I'univers, sans savoir qui I'y a mis, 
ce qu'il y est venu faire, ce qu'il deviendra 
en mourant; j'entre en effroi comme un homme 
qu'on aurait porte endormi dans une ile deserte 
et efjfroyable, et qui s'eveillerait sans connaitre 
ou il est et sans avoir aucun moyen d'en sortir. 
Et sur cela j 'admire comment on n'entre pas 
en desespoir d'un si miserable etat. Je vois 
d'autres personnes aupres de moi de semblable 
nature, et je leur demande s'ils sont mieux 
instruits que moi, et ils me disent que non. 
Et sur cela, ces miserables egares, ayant re- 
garde autour d'eux, et ayant vu quelques ob- 
jets plaisants, s'y sont donnes et s'y sont at- 
taches. Pour moi je n'ai pu m'y arreter ni me 
reposer dans la societe deces personnes, en tout 
semblables a moi, miserables comme moi, im- 
puissants comme moi. Je vois qu'ils ne m'aide- 
raient pas a mourir; je mourrai seul; il faut 
done faire comme si j'etaisseul: or, si j'etaisseul, 
je ne b§,tirais pas des maisons; je ne m'embar- 
rasserais point dans des occupations tumul- 
tuaires; je ne chercherais I'estime de personne, 
mais je tacherais seulement a decouvrir la 
verite. 



When I see the blindness and misery of man 
and the astonishing contradictions revealed 
in his nature; and observe the whole universe 
mute, and man without hght, abandoned to 
himself, as though lost in this corner of the 
universe, without knowing who put him here, 
or what he has come here to do, or what will 
become of him in dying; I feel fear like a man 
who has been carried when asleep into a desert 
and fearful island, and has waked without know- 
ing where he is and without having means of 
rescue. And thereupon I wonder how man es- 
capes despair at so miserable an estate. I see 
others about me, Uke myself, and I ask them if 
they are better informed than I, and they tell 
me no. And then these wretched wanderers, 
after looking about them and seeing some 
pleasant object, have given themselves up and 
attached themselves to it. As for me, I cannot 
stop there, or rest in the company of these per- 
sons, wholly like myself, miserable like me, im- 
potent like me. I see that they would not help 
me to die; I shall die alone; I must then act as 
though alone; but if I were alone I should not 
build houses; I should not fret myself with bus- 
tling occupations; I should seek the esteem of 
no one, but I should try only to discover the 
truth. 



THE MYSTICS 325 

Ainsi, considerant combien il y a d'appa- So, considering how much appearance there 

rence qu'il y a autre chose que ce que je vois, is that something exists other than what I see, 

j'ai recherche si ce Dieu dont tout le monde I have sought whether this God of Whom every 

parle n'aurait pas laisse quelques marques de one talks may not have left some marks of 

lui. Je regarde de toutes parts et ne vois par- Himself. I search everywhere, and see only 

tout qu' obscurite. La nature ne m'offre rien obscurity everywhere. Nature offers me no- 

que ne soit matiere de doute et d'inquietude. thing but matter of possible doubt and dis- 

Si je n'y voyais rien qui marquat une divinite, quiet. If I saw there nothing to mark a divinity, 

je me determinerais a n'en rien croire. Si je I should make up my mind to believe nothing 

voyais partout les marques d'un Createur, je of it. If I saw everywhere the marks of a 

me reposerais en paix dans la foi. Mais voyant Creator, I should rest in peace in faith. But 

trop pour nier, et trop peu pour m'assurer, seeing toomuch to deny, and too little to affirm, 

je suis dans un etat a plaindre, et ou j'ai I am in a pitiable state, where I have an hun- 

souhaite cent fois que si un Dieu soutient la dred times wished that, if a God supports na- 

nature, elle le marquat sans equivoque; et que, ture, she would show it without equivocation; 

si les marques qu' elle en donnesont trompeuses, and that, if the marks she gives are deceptive, 

elle les supprimat tout a fait; qu'elle dit tout she would suppress them wholly; that she say 

ou rien, afin que je visse quel parti je dois all or nothing, that I may see my path, 
suivre. 

This is the true Prometheus lyric, but when put back in its place 
it refuses to rest at Port-Royal which has a right to nothing but 
precision ; it has but one real home — the Abbaye-de-Saint- Victor. 
The mind that recoils from itself can only commit a sort of ecstatic 
suicide; it must absorb itself in God; and in the bankruptcy of 
twelfth-century science the Western Christian seemed actually on 
the point of attainment; he, like Pascal, touched God behind the veil 
of scepticism. 

The schools had already proved one or two points which need never 
have been discussed again. In essence, religion was love; in no case 
was it logic. Reason can reach nothing except through the senses; 
God, by essence, cannot be reached through the senses; if He is to be 
known at all. He must be known by contact of spirit with spirit, 
essence with essence; directly; by emotion; by ecstasy; by absorp- 
tion of our existence in His; by substitution of his spirit for ours. 
The world had no need to wait five hundred years longer in order to 
hear this same result reaffirmed by Pascal. Saint Francis of Assisi had 
affirmed it loudly enough, even if the voice of Saint Bernard had been 



326 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



less powerful than it was. The Virgin had asserted it in tones more 
gentle, but any one may still see how convincing, who stops a moment 
to feel the emotion that lifted her wonderful Chartres spire up to 
God. 

The Virgin, indeed, made all easy, for it was little enough she cared 
for reason or logic. She cared for her baby, a simple matter, which any 
woman could do and understand. That, and the grace of God, had 
made her Queen of Heaven. The Trinity had its source in her, — 
totius Trinitatis nobile Triclinium, — and she was maternity. She 
was also poetry and art. In the bankruptcy of reason, she alone was 
real. 

So Guillaume de Champeaux, half a century dead, came to life 
again in another of his creations. His own Abbey of Saint- Victor, 
where Abelard had carried on imaginary disputes with him, became the 
dominant school. As far as concerns its logic, we had best pass it by. 
The Victorians needed logic only to drive away logicians, which was 
hardly necessary after Bernard had shut up the schools. As for its 
mysticism, all training is much alike in idea, whether one follows the 
/ six degrees of contemplation taught by Richard of Saint-Victor, or the 
J eightfold noble way taught by Gautama Buddha. The theology of 
the school was still less important, for the Victorians contented them- 
selves with orthodoxy only in the sense of caring as little for dogma 
as for dialectics; their thoughts were fixed on higher emotions. Not 
Richard the teacher, but Adam the poet, represents the school to us, 
and when Adam dealt with dogma he frankly admitted his ignorance 
^ and hinted his indifference; he was, as always, conscientious; but he 
was not always, or often, as cold. His statement of the Trinity is a 
marvel ; but two verses of it are enough : — 



Digne logui de personis 
Vim transcendit rationis, 

Excedit ingenia. 
Quid sit gigni, quid processus, 



Of the Trinity to reason 
Leads to license or to treason 

Punishment deserving. 
What is birth and what procession 



THE MYSTICS 



327 



Me nescire sum professus, 
Sed fide non dubia. 

Qui sic credit, non festinet, 
Et a via non declinet 

Insolenter regia. 
Servet fidem, formet mores, 
Nee attendat ad errores 

Quos damnat Ecclesia. 



Is not mine to make profession, 
Save with faith unswerving. 

Thus professing, thus believing. 
Never insolently leaving 

The highway of our faith, 
Duty weighing, law obeying, 
Never shall we wander straying 

Where heresy is death. 



Such a school took natural refuge in the Holy Ghost and the Virgin, 
— Grace and Love, — but the Holy Ghost, as usual, profited by it 
much less than the Virgin. Comparatively little of Adam's poetry is 
expressly given to the Saint Esprit, and too large a part of this has a 
certain flavour of dogma : — 



Qui procedis ab utroque 
Genitore Genitoque 
Pariter, Paraclite! 

Amor Patris, Filiique 
Par amborum et utrique 
Compar et consimilis! 



The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the 
Son; neither made nor created nor begotten, 
but proceeding. 

The whole three Persons are coeternal to- 
gether; and coequal. 



This sounds like a mere versification of the Creed, yet when Adam 
ceased to be dogmatic and broke into true prayer, his verse added a 
lofty beauty even to the Holy Ghost; a beauty too serious for modern 
rhyme : — 



Oh, juvamen oppressorum, 
Oh, solamen miserorum, 

Pauperum refugium, 
Da contemptum terrenorum! 
Ad amorem supernorum 

Trahe desiderium! 

Consolator et fundator, 
Habitator et amator, 

Cordium humilium, 
Pelle mala, terge sordes, 
Et discordes fac Concordes, 

Et affer praesidium! 



Oh, helper of the heavy-laden. 
Oh, solace of the miserable, 

Of the poor, the refuge, 
Give contempt of earthly treasures I 
To the love of heavenly treasures 

Lift our hearts' desire! 

Consolation and foundation, 
Dearest friend and habitation 

Of the lowly-hearted, 
Dispel our evil, cleanse our foulness, 
And our discords turn to concord. 

And bring us succour! 



328 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

Adam's scholasticism was the most sympathetic form of mediaeval 
philosophy. Even in prose, the greatest writers have not often suc- 
ceeded in stating simply and clearly the fact that infinity can make 
itself infinite, or that space can make itself bounds, or that eternity 
can generate time. In verse, Adam did it as easily as though he were 
writing any other miracle, — as Gaultier de Coincy told the Virgin's, 
— and any one who thinks that the task was as easy as it seems, has 
only to try it and see whether he can render into a modern tongue any 
single word which shall retain the whole value of the word which 
Adam has chosen : — 

Ne periret homo reus To death condemned by awful sentence, 

Redemptorem misit Deus, ' God recalled us to repentance, 

Pater unigenitum; Sending His only Son; 

Visitavit quos amavit Whom He loved He came to cherish; 

Nosque vitae revocavit Whom His justice doomed to perish, 

Gratia non meritum. By grace to life He won, 

Infinitus et Immensus, Infinity, Immensity, 

Quem non capit uUus sensus Whom no human eye can see 

Nee locorum spatia, ,. Or human thought contain, 

Ex eterno temporalis. Made of Infinity a space. 

Ex immenso fit localis, Made of Immensity a place, 

Ut restauret omnia. And win us Life again. 

The English verses, compared with the Latin, are poor enough, with 
the canting jingle of a cheap religion and a thin philosophy, but by 
contrast and comparison they give higher value to the Latin. One feels 
the dignity and religious quality of Adam's chants the better for trying 
to give them an equivalent. One would not care to hazard such ex- 
periments on poetry of the highest class like that of Dante and Pe- 
trarch, but Adam was conventional both in verse and thought, and 
aimed at obtaining his effects from the skilful use of the Latin sonori- 
ties for the purposes of the chant. With dogma and metaphysics he 
dealt boldly and even baldly as he was required to do, and successfully 
as far as concerned the ear or the voice ; but poetry was hardly made for 



THE MYSTICS 329 

dogma; even the Trinity was better expressed mathematically than by 
rhythm. With the stronger emotions, such as terror, Adam was still 
conventional, and showed that he thought of the chant more than of 
the feeling and exaggerated the sound beyond the value of the sense. 
He could never have written the "Dies Irae." He described the ship- 
wreck of the soul in magnificent sounds without rousing an emotion 
of fear; the raging waves and winds that swept his bark past the abysses 
and up to the sky were as conventional as the sirens, the dragons, the 
dogs, and the pirates that lay in wait. The mast nodded as usual; 
the sails were rent; the sailors ceased work; all the machinery was 
classical ; only the prayer to the Virgin saved the poetry from sinking 
like the ship; and yet, when chanted, the effect was much too fine 
to bear translation : — 

Ave, Virgo singularis, 
Mater nostri Salutaris, 
Quae vocaris Stella Maris, 

Stella non erratica; 
Nos in hujus vitae mari 
Non permitte naufragari, 
Bed pro nobis Salutari 

Tuo semper supplica! 

Saevit mare, fremunt venti, 
Fluctus surgunt turbulenti; 
Navis currit, sed current! 

Tot occurrunt obvia! 
Hie sirenes voluptatis, 
Draco, canes cum piratis, 
Mortem pene desperatis 

Haec intentant omnia. 

Post abyssos, nunc ad ccelum 
Furens unda fert phaselum; 
Nutat malus, fluit velum, 

Nautae cessat opera; 
Contabescit in his malis 
Homo noster animalis; 
Tu nos, Mater spiritalis, 

Pereuntes libera! 



330 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

Finer still is the famous stanza sung at Easter, in which Christ rises, 
the Lion of Judah, in the crash of the burst gates of death, at the roar 
of the Father Lion : — 

Sic de Juda, leo fortis, 
Fractis portis dirae mortis, 

Die surgens tertia, 
Rugiente voce patris 
Ad supernae sinum matris 

Tot revexit spolia. 

For terror or ferocity or images of pain, the art of the twelfth 
century had no use except to give the higher value to their images of 
love. The figures on the west portal of Chartres are alive with the 
spirit of Adam's poetry, but it is the spirit of the Virgin. Like Saint 
Bernard, Adam lavished his affections on Mary, and even more than 
Saint Bernard he could claim to be her poet-laureate. Bernard was not 
himself author of the hymn "Stella Maris" which brought him the 
honour of the Virgin's personal recognition, but Adam was author of a 
dozen hymns in which her perfections were told with equal fervour, 
and which were sung at her festivals. Among these was the famous 

Salve, Mater Pietatis, 
Et totius Trinitatis 
Nobile Triclinium! 

a compliment so refined and yet so excessive that the Venerable Thomas 
Cantimpratensis who died a century later, about 1280, related in his 
"Apiarium" that when "venerabilis Adam" wrote down these lines, 
Mary herself appeared to him and bent her head in recognition. Al- 
though the manuscripts do not expressly mention this miracle, they 
do contain, at that stanza, a curious note expressing an opinion, ap- 
parently authorized by the prior, that, if the Virgin had seen fit to 
recognize the salutation of the Venerable Adam in this manner, she 
would have done only what he merited: " ab ea resalutari et regratiari 
meruit." 

Adam's poems are still on the shelves of most Parisian bookshops, 
as common as " Aucassins" and better known than much poetry of our 
own time; for the mediaeval Latin rhymes have a delightful sonority 



THE MYSTICS 331 

and simplicity that keep them popular because they were not made to 
be read but to be sung. One does not forget their swing : — 

Infinitus et Immensus; 
or — 

Oh, juvamen oppressorum; 
or — 

Consolatrix miserorum 
Suscitatrix mortuorum. 

The organ rolls through them as solemnly as ever it did in the Abbey 
Church ; but in mediaeval art so much more depends on the mass than 
on the measure — on the dignity than on the detail — that equivalents 
are impossible. Even Walter Scott was content to translate only 
three verses of the " Dies Irse." At best, Viollet-le-Duc could reproduce 
only a sort of modern Gothic ; a more or less effaced or affected echo of 
a lost emotion which the world never felt but once and never could feel 
again. Adam composed a number of hymns to the Virgin, and, in them 
all, the feeling counts for more, by far, than the sense. Supposing we 
choose the simplest and try to give it a modern version, aiming to show, 
by comparison, the difference of sound; one can perhaps manage to 
recover a little of the simplicity, but give it the grand style one cannot ; 
or, at least, if any one has ever done both, it is Walter Scott, and merely 
by placing side by side the "Dies Irae" and his translation of it, one 
can see at a glance where he was obliged to sacrifice simplicity only to 
obtain sound : — 

Dies irae, dies ilia, That day of wrath, that dreadful day, 

Solvet seclum in favilla, When heaven and earth shall pass away. 

Teste David cum Sibylla. What power shall be the sinner's stay? 

How shall he meet that dreadful day? 
Quantus tremor est futurus, 
Quando judex est venturus, 
Cuncta stricte discussurus! When shrivelling like a parched scroll 

The flaming heavens together roll; 
Tuba mirum spargens sonum When louder yet and yet more dread 

Per sepulchra regionum, Swells the high trump that wakes the dead. 

Coget omnes ante thronum. 

As translation the last line is artificial. 



332 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



The "Dies Irse" does not belong, In spirit, to the twelfth century; 
it is sombre and gloomy like the Last Judgments on the thirteenth- 
century portals; it does not love. Adam loved. His verses express the 
Virgin; they are graceful, tender, fervent, and they hold the same dig- 
nity which cannot be translated : — 



In hac valle lacrimarum 
Nihil dulce, nihil carum, 

Suspecta sunt omnia; 
Quid hie nobis erit tutum, 
Cum nee ipsa vel virtutum 

Tuta sit vietoria! 

Caro nobis adversatur, 
Mundus earni suffragatur 

In nostram pernieiem; 
Hostis instat, nos infestans, 
Nune se palam manifest ans, 

Nunc oceultans rabiem. 

Et peccamus et punimur, 
Et diversis irretimur 

Laqueis venantium. 
Maria, mater Dei, 
Tu, post Deum, summa spei, 

Tu dulee refugium; 

Tot et tantis irretiti, 
Non valemus his reniti 

Ne vi nee industria; 
Consolatrix miserorum, 
Suseitatrix mortuorum, 

Mortis rompe retia! 



In this valley full of tears, 
Nothing softens, nothing eheers. 

All is suspeeted lure; 
What safety ean we hope for, here. 
When even virtue faints for fear 

Her vietory be not sure! 

Within, the flesh a traitor is, 
Without, the world encompasses, 

A deadly wound to bring. 
The foe is greedy for our spoils. 
Now clasping us within his coils. 

Or hiding now his sting. 

We sin, and penalty must pay. 

And we are caught, like beasts of prey. 

Within the hunter's snares. 
Nearest to God! oh Mary Mother! 
Hope ean reach us from none other, 

Sweet refuge from our cares; 

We have no strength to struggle longer, 
For our bonds are more and stronger 

Than our hearts ean bear! 
You who rest the heavy-laden. 
You who lead lost souls to Heaven, 

Burst the hunter's snare! 



The art of this poetry of love and hope, which marked the mystics, 
lay of course in the background of shadows which marked the cloister. 
"Inter vania nihil vanius est homine." Man is an imperceptible 
atom always trying to become one with God. If ever modern science 
achieves a definition of energy, possibly it may borrow the figure: 
Energy is the inherent effort of every multiplicity to become unity. 
Adam's poetry was an expression of the effort to reach absorption 



THE MYSTICS 333 

through love, not through fear; but to do this thoroughly he had to 
make real to himself his own nothingness; most of all, to annihilate 
pride; for the loftiest soul can comprehend that an atom, — say, of 
hydrogen, — which is proud of its personality, will never merge in a 
molecule of water. The familiar verse: "Oh, why should the spirit of 
mortal be proud?" echoes Adam's epitaph to this day: — 

Heeres peccati, natura filius irae, Heir of sin, by nature son of wrath, 

Exiliique reus nascitur omnis homo. Condemned to exile, every man is born. 

Unde superbit homo, cujus conceptio culpa, Whence is man's pride, whose conception fault, 
Nasci poena, labor vita, necesse mori? Birth pain, life labour, and whose death is 

sure? 

Four concluding lines, not by him, express him even better: — 

Hie ego qui jaceo, miser et miserabiUs Adam, 

Unam pro summo munere posco precem. 
Peccavi, fateor; veniam peto; parce fatenti; 

Parce, pater: fratres, parcite; parce, Deus! 

One does not conceive that Adam insisted so passionately on his 
sins because he thought them — or himself — important before the 
Infinite. Chemistry does not consider an atom of oxygen as in itself 
important, yet if it wishes to get a volume of pure gas, it must separate 
the elements. The human soul was an atom that could unite with God 
only as a simple element. The French mystics showed in their mysti- 
cism the same French reasonableness; the sense of measure, of logic, 
of science; the allegiance to form; the transparency of thought, which 
the French mind has always shown on its surface like a shell of nacre. 
The mystics were in substance rather more logical than the schoolmen 
and much more artistic in their correctness of line and scale. At bot- 
tom, French saints were not extravagant. One can imagine a Byzan- 
tine asserting that no French saint was ever quite saintly. Their aims 
and ideals were very high, but not beyond reaching and not unreason- 
able. Drag the French mind as far from line and logic as space permits, 
the instant it is freed it springs back to the classic and tries to look 
consequent. 



334 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

This paradox, that the French mystics were never mystical, runs 
through all our travels, so obstinately recurring in architecture, sculp- 
ture, legend, philosophy, religion, and poetry, that it becomes tiresome; 
and yet it is an idea that, in spite of Matthew Arnold and many 
other great critics, never has got lodgment in the English or German 
mind, and probably never will. Every one who loves travel will hope 
that it never may. If you are driven to notice it as the most distinctive 
mark of French art, it is not at all for the purpose of arguing a doubt- 
ful law, but only in order to widen the amusement of travel. We set 
out to travel from Mont-Saint- Michel to Chartres, and no farther; 
there we stop; but we may still look across the boundary to Assisi for 
a specimen of Italian Gothic architecture, a scheme of colour decora- 
tion, or still better for a mystic to compare with the Bernadines and 
Victorians. Every one who knows anything of religion knows that 
the ideal mystic saint of western Europe was Francis of Assisi, and 
that Francis, though he loved France, was as far as possible from be- 
ing French; though not in the least French, he was still the finest flower 
from the French mediaeval garden; and though the French mystics 
could never have understood him, he was what the French mystics 
would have liked to be or would have thought they liked to be as long 
as they knew him to be not one of themselves. As an Italian or as a 
Spaniard, Francis was in harmony with his world; as a Frenchman, 
he would have been out of place even at Clairvaux, and still more 
among his own Cordeliers at the doors of the Sorbonne. 

Francis was born in 1186, at the instant when French art was cul- 
minating, or about to culminate, in the new cathedrals of Laon and 
'Chartres, on the ruins of scholastic religion and in the full summer of 
the Courts of Love. He died in 1226, just as Queen Blanche became 
Regent of France and when the Cathedral of Beauvais was planned. 
His life precisely covered the most perfect moment of art and feeling 
in the thousand years of pure and confident Christianity. To an 
emotional nature like his, life was still a phantasm or "concept" of 



THE MYSTICS 335 

crusade against real or Imaginary enemies of God, with the" Chanson 
de Roland" for a sort of evangel, and a feminine Ideal for a passion. 
He chose for his mistress "domina nostra paupertas," and the rules of 
his order of knighthood were as visionary as those of Saint Bernard 
were practical. "IstI sunt fratres mei milites tabulae rotundse, qui 
latitant in desertis"; his Knights of the Round Table hid themselves 
for their training In deserts of poverty, simplicity, humility, Innocence 
of self, absorption in nature, in the silence of God, and, above all, in 
love and joy incarnate, whose only influence was example. Poverty of 
body in itself mattered nothing ; what Francis wanted was poverty of 
pride, and the external robe or the bare feet were outward and neces- 
sary forms of protection against Its outward display. Against riches 
or against all external and visible vanity, rules and laws could be easily 
enforced If it were worth while, although the purest humility would be 
reached only by those who were indifferent and unconscious of their 
external dress; but against spiritual pride the soul is defenceless, and 
of all its forms the subtlest and the meanest is pride of intellect. If 
"nostra domlna paupertas" had a mortal enemy. It was not the pride 
beneath a scarlet robe, but that in a schoolmaster's ferule, and of all 
schoolmasters the vainest and most pretentious was the scholastic 
philosopher. Satan was logic. Lord Bacon held much the same opinion. 
"I reject the syllogism," was the starting-point of his teaching as It 
was the essence of Saint Francis's, and the reasons of both men were 
the same though their action was opposite. "Let men please them- 
selves as they will In admiring and almost adoring the human kind, 
this is certain : — that, as an uneven mirror distorts the rays of ob- 
jects according to Its own figure and section, so the mind . . . cannot 
be trusted. . . ." Bacon's first object was the same as that of Francis, 
to humiliate and if possible destroy the pride of human reason; both 
of them knew that this was their most difficult task, and Francis, who 
was charity Incarnate, lost his self-control whenever he spoke of the 
schools, and became almost bitter, as though in constant terror of a 



336 



MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 



poison or a cancer. ''Prseodorabat etiam tempora non longe ventura 
in quibus jam prsesciebat scientiam inflativam debere esse occasionem 
ruinse." He foresaw the time not far off when puffed-up science would 
be the ruin of his "domina paupertas." His struggle with this form of 
human pride was desperate and tragical in its instant failure. He could 
not make even his novices understand what he meant. The most im- 
possible task of the mind is to reject in practice the reflex action of it- 
self, as Bacon pointed out, and only the highest training has sometimes 
partially succeeded in doing it. The schools — ancient, mediaeval, or 
modern — have almost equally failed, but even the simple rustics 
who tried to follow Francis could not see why the rule of poverty 
should extend to the use of a psalter. Over and over again he explained 
vehemently and dramatically as only an Italian or a Spaniard could, 
and still they failed to catch a notion of what he meant. 



Quum ergo venisset beatus Franciscus ad 
locum ubi erat ille novitius, dixit ille novitius: 
"Pater, mihi esset magna consolatio habere 
psalterium, sed licet generalis illud mihi con- 
cesserit, tamen vellem ipsum habere, pater, de 
conscientia tua." Cm beatus Franciscus re- 
spondit: "Carolus imperator, Rolandus et 
Ohverus et omnes palatini et robusti viri qui 
potentes fuerunt in prcelio, prosequendo infi- 
deles cum multa sudore et labore usque ad 
mortem, habuerunt de illis victoriam memoria- 
liter, et ad ultimum ipsi sancti martyres sunt 
mortui pro fide Christi in certamine. Nunc 
autem multi sunt qui sola narratione eorum 
quae illi fecerunt volunt recipere honorem et 
humanam laudem. Ita et inter nos sunt mvdti 
qui solum recitando et praedicando opera quae 
sancti fecerunt volunt recipere honorem et 
laudem; , . . postquam habueris psalterium, 
concu.pisces et volueris habere breviarium; et 
postquam habueris breviarium, sedebis in 
cathedra tanquam magnus prelatus et dices 
fratri tuo: — Apporta mihi breviarium!" 

Haec autem dicens beatus Franciscus cum 
magno fervore spiritus accepit de cinere et 
posuit super caput suum, et ducendo maniam 



So when Saint Francis happened to come to 
the place where the novice was, the novice 
said: "Father, it would be a great comfort to 
me to have a psalter, but though my general 
should grant it, still I would rather have it, fa- 
ther, with your knowledge too." Saint Francis 
answered: "The Emperor Charlemagne, Ro- 
land and Oliver, and all the palatines and 
strong men who were potent in battle, pursuing 
the infidels with much toil and sweat even to 
death, triumphed over them memorably [with- 
out writing it?], and at last these holy martyrs 
died in the contest for the faith of Christ. But 
now there are many who, merely by telling of 
what those men did, want to receive honour 
and human praise. So, too, among us are many 
who, merely by reciting and preaching the 
works which the saints have done, want to re- 
ceive honour and praise; . , . After you have 
got the psalter, you will covet and want a 
breviary; and after getting the breviary, you 
will sit on your throne Uke a bishop, and will 
say to your brother: 'Bring me the breviary! ' " 

While saying this. Saint Francis with great 
vehemence took up a handful of ashes and 
spread it over his head; and moving his hand 



THE MYSTICS 337 

super caput suum in circuitu sicut ille qui lavat about his head in a circle as though washing it, 
caput, dicebat: "Ego breviarium! ego breviar- said: "I, breviary! I, breviary!" and so kept 
ium!" et sic reiteravit multoties ducendo on, repeatedly moving his hand about his head; 
manum per caput. Et stupefactus et verecun- and stupefied and ashamed was that novice, 
datus est frater ille. . . . Elapsis autem pluribus . . . But several months afterwards when Saint 
mensibus quum esset beatus Franciscus apud Francis happened to be near Sta Maria de 
locum sanctae Marias de Portiuncula, juxta eel- Portiuncula, by the cell behind the house on 
lam post domum in via, praedictus frater iterum the road, the same brother again spoke to him 
locutus est ei de psalterio. Cui beatus Francis- about the psalter. Saint Francis replied: "Go 
cus dixit : " Vade et facias de hoc sicut dicet tibi and do about it as your director says." On this 
minister tuus!" Quo audito, frater ille coepit the brother turned back, but Saint Francis, 
redire per viam unde venerat. Beatus autem standing in the road, began to reflect on what 
Franciscus remanens in via ccepit considerare he had said, and suddenly called after him: 
illud quod dixerat illi fratri, et statim clamavit "Wait for me, brother! wait!" and going after 
post eum, dicens: "Expecta me, frater! ex- him, said: "Return with me, brother, and show 
pecta!" Et ivit usque ad eum et ait illi: "Re- me the place where I told you to do as your 
vertere mecum, frater, et ostende mihi locum director should say, about the psalter." When 
ubi dixi tibi quod faceres de psalterio sicut they had come back to it. Saint Francis bent 
diceret minister tuus." Quum ergo pervenis- before the brother, and said: "Mea culpa, bro- 
sent ad locum, beatus Franciscus genuflexit ther, mea culpa! because whoever wishes to be 
coram fratre illo, et dixit: "Mea culpa, frater! a Minorite must have nothing but a timic, as 
mea culpa! qxiia quicunque vult esse frater the rule permits, and the cord, and the loin- 
Minor non debet habere nisi tunicam, sicut reg- cloth, and what covering is manifestly neces- 
ula sibi concedit, et cordam et femoralia et qui sary for the limbs." 
manifesta necessitate coguntur calciamenta." 

So vivid a picture of an actual mediaeval saint stands out upon this 
simple background as is hardly to be found elsewhere in all the records 
of centuries, but if the brother himself did not understand it and was 
so shamed and stupefied by Francis's vehemence, the world could 
understand it no better ; the Order itself was ashamed of Saint Francis 
because they understood him too well. They hastened to suppress 
this teaching against science, although it was the life of Francis's doc- 
trine. He taught that the science of the schools led to perdition because 
it was puffed up with emptiness and pride. Humility, simplicity, pov- 
erty were alone true science. They alone led to heaven. Before the 
tribunal of Christ, the schoolmen would be condemned, "and, with 
their dark logic (opinionibus tenebrosis) shall be plunged into outer 
darkness with the spirits of the darkness." They were devilish, and 
wcaild perish with the devils. 



338 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

One sees instantly that neither Francis of Assisi nor Bacon of Veru- 
1am could have hoped for peace with the schools; twelfth-century 
ecstasy felt the futility of mere rhetoric quite as keenly as seventeenth- 
century scepticism was to feel it; and yet when Francis died in 1226 
at Assisi, Thomas was just being born at Aquino some two hundred 
kilometres to the southward. True scholasticism had not begun. Four 
hundred years seem long for the human mind to stand still — or go 
backward; the more because the human mind was never better satis- 
fied with itself than when thus absorbed in its mirror; but with that 
chapter we have nothing to do. The pleasantest way to treat it was that 
of Saint Francis; half-serious, half-jesting; as though, after all, in the 
thought of infinity, four hundred years were at most only a serio- 
comic interlude. At Assisi, once, when a theologian attacked Fra 
Egidio by the usual formal arraignment in syllogisms, the brother 
waited until the conclusions were laid down, and then, taking out a 
flute from the folds of his robe, he played his answer in rustic melodies. 
The soul of Saint Francis was a rustic melody and the simplest that 
ever reached so high an expression. Compared with it, Theocritus 
and Virgil are as modern as Tennyson and ourselves. 

All this shows only what Saint Francis was not ; to understand what 
he was and how he goes with Saint Bernard and Saint Victor throi.; , 
the religious idyll of Transition architecture, one must wander about 
Assisi with the * ' Floretum " or " Fioretti ' ' in one's hand ; — the legends 
which are the gospel of Francis as the evangels are the gospel of Christ, 
who was reincarnated in Assisi. We have given a deal of time to show- 
ing our own sceptical natures how simple the architects and decora- 
tors of Chartres were in their notions of the Virgin and her wants; 
but French simple-mindedness was already complex compared with 
Italian. The Virgin was human; Francis was elementary nature itself, 
like sun and air; he was Greek in his joy of life: — 

. . . Recessit inde et venit inter Cannarium . . . He departed thence and came between 
et Mevanium. Et respexit quasdam arbores Cannara and Bevagna; and near the road he 



THE MYSTICS 



339 



juxta viam in quibus residebat tanta multi- 
tudo avium diversarum quod nunquam in 
partibus illis visa similis multitude. In campo 
insuper juxta praedictas arbores etiam multi- 
tude maxima residebat. Quam multitudinem 
sanctus Franciscus respiciens et admirans, 
facto super eum Spiritu Dei, dixit sociis: "Vo- 
bis hie me in via exspectantibus, ibo et prae- 
dicabo sororibus nostris aviculis." Et intravit 
in campum ad aves quae residebant in terra. 
Et statim quum praedicare incepit omnes aves 
in arboribus residentes descenderunt ad eum 
et simul cum aliis de campo immobiles perman- 
serunt, quum tamen ipse inter eas iret plurimas 
tunica contingendo. Et nulla earum penitus 
movebatur, sicut recitavit frater Jacobus de 
Massa, sanctus homo, qui omnia supradicta 
habuit ab ore fratris Massei, qui fuit unus de 
iis qui tunc erant socii sancti patris. 

Quibus avibus sanctus Franciscus ait: 
"Multmn tenemini Deo, sorores meae aves, 
et debetis eum semper et ubique laudare prop- 
ter liberum quem ubique habetis volatum, 
propter vestitum duplicatum et triplicatum, 
propter habitum pictum et ornatum, propter 
victum sine vestro labore paratum, propter 
cantum a Creatore vobis intimatum, propter 
numerum ex Dei benedictione multiplicatum, 
propter semen vestrum a Deo in area reserva- 
tum, propter elementum aeris vobis deputa- 
tum. Vos non seminatis neque metitis, et Deus 
vos pascit ; et dedit vobis flumina et fontes ad 
potandum, montes et coUes, saxa et ibices ad 
refugium, et arbores altas ad nidificandum; 
et quum nee filare nee texere sciatis, praebet 
tam vobis quam vestris filiis necessarium in- 
dumentum. Unde multum diligit vos Creator 
qui tot beneficia contulit. Quapropter cavete, 
sorores meas aviculfe, ni sitis ingratae sed 
semper laudare Deum studete." 



saw some trees on which perched so great a 
number^jpf birds as never in those parts had 
been seen the like. Also in the field beyond, 
near these same trees, a very great multitude 
rested on the ground. This multitude. Saint 
Francis seeing with wonder, the spirit of God 
descending on him he said to his companions: 
"Wait for me on the road, while I go and 
preach to our sisters the little birds." And he 
went into the field where the birds were on 
the ground. And as soon as he began to preach, 
all the birds in the trees came down to him and 
with those in the field stood quite still, even 
when he went among them touching many 
with his robe. Not one of them moved, 
as Brother James of Massa related, a saintly 
man who had the whole story from the mouth 
of Brother Masseo who was one of those then 
with the sainted father. 

To these birds, Saint Francis said: "Much 
are you bound to God, birds, my sisters, and 
everywhere and always must you praise him for 
the free flight you everywhere have; for the 
double and triple covering; for the painted and 
decorated robe; for the food prepared without 
your labour; for the song taught you by the 
Creator; for your number multiplied by God's 
blessing; for your seed preserved by God in 
the ark; for the element of air allotted to you. 
You neither sow nor reap, and God feeds 
you; and has given you rivers and springs 
to drink at, mountains and hills, rocks and 
wild goats for refuge, and high trees for nesting; 
and though you know neither how to spin nor 
to weave. He gives both you and your children 
all the garments you need. Whence much must 
the Creator love you. Who confers so many 
blessings. Therefore take care, my small bird 
sisters,never to be ungrateful, but always strive 
to praise God." 



Fra Ugolino, or whoever wrote from the dictation of Brother James 
of Massa, after the tradition of Brother Masseo of Marignano reported 
Saint Francis's sermon in absolute good faith as Saint Francis probably 



340 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

made it and as the birds possibly received it. All were God's creatures, 
brothers and sisters, and God alone knew or knows whether or how far 
they understand each other; but Saint Francis, in any case, understood 
them and believed that they were in sympathy with him. As far as 
the birds or wolves were concerned, it was no great matter, but Francis 
did not stop with vertebrates or even with organic forms. "Nor was 
it surprising," said the "Speculum," "if fire and other creatures some- 
times revered and obeyed him ; for, as we who were with him very fre- 
quently saw, he held them in such affection and so much delighted in 
them, and his soul was moved by such pity and compassion for them, 
that he would not see them roughly handled, and talked with them 
with such evident delight as if they were rational beings": — 

Nam quadam vice, quum sederet juxta For once when he was sitting by the fire, a 
ignem, ipso nesciente, ignis invasit pannos ejus spark, without his knowing it, caught his linen 
de lino, sive brachas, juxta genu, quumque drawers and set them burning near the knee,- 
sentiret calorem ejus nolebat ipsum extin- and when he felt the heat he would not extin- 
guere. Socius autem ejus videns comburi guish it; but his companion, seeing his clothes 
pannos ejus cucurrit ad eum volens extinguere on fire, ran to put it out, and he forbade it, 
ignem; ipse vero prohibuit ei, dicens: "NoH, saying: "Don't, my dearest brother, don't hurt 
frater, carissime, noli male facere igni!" Et sic the fire!" So he utterly refused to let him put 
nullo modo voluit quod extingueret ipsum. Ille it out, and the brother hurried off to get his 
vero festinanter ivit ad fratrem qui erat guardian, and brought him to Saint Francis, 
guardianus ipsius, et duxit eum ad beatum and together they put out the fire at once 
Franciscum, et statim contra voluntatem against Saint Francis's will. So, no matter 
beati Francisci, extinxit ignem. Unde quacun- what the necessity, he would never put out fire 
que necessitate urgente nunquam voluit ex- or a lamp or candle, so strong was his feeling 
tinguere ignem vel lampadem vel candelam, for it; he would not even let a brother throw fire 
tantum pietate movebatur ad ipsum. Nolebat or a smoking log from place to place, as is 
etiam quod frater projiceret ignem vel lignum usual, but wanted it placed gently (piano) on 
fumigantem de loco ad locum sicut solet fieri, the ground, out of respect for Him Whose crea- 
sed volebat ut plane poneret ipsum in terra ture it is, 
ob reverentiam illius cujus est creatura. 

The modern tourist, having with difhculty satisfied himself that 
Saint Francis acted thus in good faith, immediately exclaims that he 
was a heretic and should have been burned; but, in truth, the immense 
popular charm of Saint Francis, as of the Virgin, was precisely his 
heresies. Both were illogical and heretical by essence; — in strict 



THE MYSTICS 341 

discipline, In the days of the Holy Office, a hundred years later, both 
would have been burned by the Church, as Jeanne d'Arc was, with 
infinitely less reason, in 143 1. The charm of the twelfth-century Church 
was that it knew how to be illogical — no great moral authority ever 
knew it better — when God Himself became illogical. It cared no more 
than Saint Francis, or Lord Bacon, for the syllogism. Nothing in 
twelfth-century art is so fine as the air and gesture of sympathetic 
majesty with which the Church drew aside to let the Virgin and Saint 
Francis pass and take the lead — for a time. Both were human ideals 
too intensely realized to be resisted merely because they were illogical. 
The Church bowed and was silent. 

This does not concern us. What the Church thought or thinks is 
its own affair, and what it chooses to call orthodox is orthodox. We 
have been trying only to understand what the Virgin and Saint Francis 
thought, which is matter of fact, not of faith. Saint Francis was 
even more outspoken than the Virgin. She calmly set herself above 
dogma, and, with feminine indifference to authority, overruled it. 
He, having asserted in the strongest terms the principle of obedience, 
paid no further attention to dogma, but, without the least reticence, 
insisted on practices and ideas that no Church could possibly permit 
or avow. Toward the end of his life, his physician cauterized his face 
for some neuralgic pain : — 

Et posito ferro in igne pro coctura fienda, When the iron was put on the fire for mak- 

beatus Franciscus volens confortare spiritum ing the cautery, Saint Francis, wishing to en- 

suum ne pavesceret, sic locutus est ad ignem: courage himself against fear, spoke thus to the 

"Frater mi, ignis, nobilis et utilis' inter alias fire: "My brother, fire, noblest and usefuUest 

creaturas, esto mihi curialis in hac hora quia of creatures, be gentle to me now, because I 

dim te dilexi et diligam amore illius qui creavit have loved and will love you with the love of 

te. Deprecor etiam creatorem nostrum qui nos Him who created you. Our Creator, too, Who 

creavit ut ita tuum calorem temperet ut ipsum created us both, I implore so to temper your 

sustinere valeam." Et oratione finita signavit heat that I may have strength to bear it." 

ignem signo crucis. And having spoken, he signed the fire with the 

cross. 

With him, this was not merely a symbol. Children and saints can 
believe two contrary things at the same time, but Saint Francis had 



342 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

also a complete faith of his own which satisfied him wholly. All nature 
was God's creature. The sun and fire, air and water, were neither more 
nor less brothers and sisters than sparrows, wolves, and bandits. Even 
"daemones sunt castalli Domini nostri"; the devils are wardens of our 
Lord. If Saint Francis made any exception from his univeral law of 
brotherhood it was that of the schoolmen, but it was never expressed. 
Even in his passionate outbreak, in the presence of Saint Dominic, at 
the great Chapter of his Order at Sancta Maria de Portiuncula in 1218, 
he did not go quite to the length of denying the brotherhood of school- 
men, although he placed them far below the devils, and yet every word 
of this address seems to sob with the anguish of his despair at the power 
of the school anti-Christ : — 

Quum beatus Franciscus esset in capitulo When Saint Francis was at the General 

generali apud Sanctam Mariam de Portiuncula Chapter held at Sancta Maria de Portiuncula 

. . . et fuerunt ibi quinque millia fratres, quam- . . . and five thousand brothers were present, 

plures fratres sapientes et scientiati iverunt ad a number of them who were schoolmen went 

dominum Ostiensem qui erat ibidem, et dixer- to Cardinal Hugolino who was there, and said 

unt ei: "Domine, volumus ut suadetis fratri to him: "My lord, we want you to persuade 

Francisco quod sequatur consilium fratrum Brother Francis to follow the council of the 

sapientium et permittat se interdum duci ab learned brothers, and sometimes let himself 

eis." Et allegabant regulam sancti Benedicti, be guided by them." And they suggested the 

A-Ugustini et Bernardi qui docent sic et sic rule of Saint Benedict or Augustine or Bernard 

vivere ordinate. Quae omnia quum retulisset who require their congregations to live so and 

cardinalis beato Francisco per modum admoni- so, by regulation. When the Cardinal had re- 

tionis, beatus Franciscus, nihil sibi respondens, peated all this to Saint Francis by way of coun- 

cepit ipsum per manum et duxit eum ad fratres sel, Saint Francis, making no answer, took him 

congregates in capitulo, et sic locutus est by the hand and led him to the brothers assem- 

f ratribus in f ervore et virtute Spiritus sancti : — bled in Chapter, and in the fervour and virtue 

of the Holy Ghost, spoke thus to the brothers: 

"Fratres mei, fratres mei, Dominus vocavit "My brothers, my brothers, God has called 

pie per viam simplicitatis et humilitatis, et hanc me by the way of simplicity and humility, and 

viam ostendit mihi in veritate pro me et pro has shown me in verity this path for me 

illis qui volunt mihi credere et imitari. Et ideo and those who want to believe and follow me; 

volo quod non nominetis mihi aliquam regulam so I want you to talk of no Rule to me, neither 

neque sancti Benedicti neque sancti Augustini Saint Benedict nor Saint Augustine nor Saint 

neque sancti Bernardi, neque aliquam viam Bernard, nor any way or form of Life whatever 

et formam vivendi praeter illam qu£e mihi a except that which God has mercifully pointed 

Domino est ostensa misericorditer et donata. out and granted to me. And God said that he 

Et dixit mihi Dominus quod volebat me esse wanted me to be a pauper [poverello] and an 

unum pauperem et stultum idiotam [magnum idiot — a great fool — in this world, and would 



THE MYSTICS 343 

fatuum] in hoc mundo et noluit nos ducere not lead us by any other path of science than 
per viam aliam quam per istam scientiam. Sed this. But by your science and syllogisms God 
per vestram scientiam et sapientiam Deus vos will confound you, and I trust in God's warders, 
confundet et ego confido in castallis Domini the devils, that through them God shall punish 
[idest daemonibus] quod per ipsos puniet vos you, and you will yet come back to your proper 
Deus et adhuc redibitis ad vestrum statum station with shame, whether you will or no." 
cum vituperio vestro velitis nolitis." 

The narration continues: "Tunc cardinalis obstupuit valde et nihil 
respondit. Et omnes fratres plurimum timuerunt." 

One feels that the reporter has not exaggerated a word; on the 
contrary, he softened the scandal, because in his time the Cardinal had 
gained his point, and Francis was dead. One can hear Francis begin- 
ning with some restraint, and gradually carried away by passion till he 
lost control of himself and his language: " ' God told me, with his own 
words, that he meant me to be a beggar and a great fool, and would 
not have us on any other terms; and as for your science, I trust in 
God's devils who will beat you out of it, as you deserve.' And the 
Cardinal was utterly dumbfounded and answered nothing; and all the 
brothers were scared to death." The Cardinal Hugolino was a great 
schoolman, and Dominic was then founding the famous order in which 
the greatest of all doctors, Albertus Magnus, was about to begin his 
studies. One can imagine that the Cardinal "obstupuit valde," and 
that Dominic felt shaken in his scheme of school instruction. For a 
single instant, in the flash of Francis's passion, the whole mass of 
five thousand monks in a state of semi-ecstasy recoiled before the 
impassable gulf that opened between them and the Church. 

No one was to blame — no one ever is to blame — because God 
wanted contradictory things, and man tried to carry out, as he saw 
them, God's trusts. The schoolmen saw their duty in one direction; 
Francis saw his in another; and, apparently, when both lines had been 
carried, after such fashion as might be, to their utmost results, and five 
hundred years had been devoted to the efi"ort, society declared both 
to.be failures. Perhaps both may some day be revived, for the two 



344 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

paths seem to be the only roads that can exist, if man starts by taking 
for granted that there is an object to be reached at the end of his jour- 
ney. The Church, embracing all mankind, had no choice but to march 
with caution, seeking God by every possible means of intellect and 
study. Francis, acting only for himself, could throw caution aside and 
trust implicitly in God, like the children who went on crusade. The 
two poles of social and political philosophy seem necessarily to be or- 
ganization or anarchy; man's intellect or the forces of nature. Francis 
saw God in nature, if he did not see nature in God; as the builders of 
Chartres saw the Virgin in their apse. Francis held the simplest and 
most childlike form of pantheism. He carried to its last point the 
mystical union with God, and its necessary consequence of contempt 
and hatred for human intellectual processes. Even Saint Bernard 
would have thought his ideas wanting in that "mesure" which the 
French mind so much prizes. At the same time we had best try, as 
innocently as may be, to realize that no final judgment has yet been 
pronounced, either by the Church or by society or by science, on either 
or any of these points; and until mankind finally settles to a certainty 
where it means to gO; or whether it means to go anywhere, — what its 
object is, or whether it has an object, — Saint Francis may still prove 
to have been its ultimate expression. In that case, his famous chant 
— the " Cantico del Sole " — will be the last word of religion, as it was 
probably its first. Here it is — too sincere for translation: — 

CANTICO DEL SOLE 

. . . Laudato sie, misignore, con tucte le tue creature 
^ spetialmente messor lo frate sole 

lo quale iorno et allumini noi per loi 

et ellu e bellu e radiante cum grande splendore 
de te, altissimo, porta significatione. 

Laudato si, misignore, per sora luna e le stelle 
in celu lai formate clarite et pretiose et belle. 

Laudato si, misignore, per frate vento 
et per aere et nubilo et sereno et onne tempo 
per lo quale a le tue creatxire dai sustentamento. 



THE MYSTICS 345 

Laudato si, misignore, per sor aqua 
la quale e multo utile et humile et pretiosa et casta. 

Laudato si, misignore, per frate focu 
per lo quale enallumini la nocte 
ed ello e bello et jocondo et robustoso et forte. 

Laudato si, misignore, per sora nostra matre terra 
la quale ne sustenta et governa 
et produce diversi fructi con coloriti flori et herba. 



Laudato si, misignore, per sora nostra morte corporale 
de la quale nullu homo vivente po skappare 
guai acquelli ke morrano ne le peccata mortali. ... 

The verses, if verses they are, have little or nothing in common 
with the art of Saint Bernard or Adam of Saint- Victor. Whatever art 
they have, granting that they have any, seems to go back to the cave- 
dwellers and the age of stone. Compared with the naivete of the " Can- 
tico del Sole," the "Chanson de Roland" or the "Iliad" is a triumph 
of perfect technique. The value is not in the verse. The " Chant of the 
Sun " is another " Pons Seclorum " — or perhaps rather a " Pons Sanc- 
torum" — over which only children and saints can pass. It is almost 
a paraphrase of the sermon to the birds. "Thank you, mi signore, 
for messor brother sun, in especial, who is your symbol; and for sis- 
ter moon and the stars; and for brother wind and air and sky; and 
for sister water ; and for brother fire ; and for mother earth ! We are all 
yours, mi signore! We are your children; your household; your feudal 
family! but we never heard of a Church. We are all varying forms of 
the same ultimate energy; shifting symbols of the same absolute unity; 
but our only unity, beneath you, is nature, not law! We thank you for 
no human institutions, even for those established in your name; but, 
with all our hearts we thank you for sister our mother Earth and its 
fruits and coloured flowers!" 

Francis loved them all — the brothers and sisters — as intensely as 
a child loves the taste and smell of a peach, and as simply; but behind 
them remained one sister whom no one loved, and for whom, in his 



346 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

first verses, Francis had rendered no thanks. Only on his death-bed he 
added the lines of gratitude for "our sister death," the long-sought, 
never-found sister of the schoolmen, who solved all philosophy and 
merged multiplicity in unity. The solution was at least simple; one 
must decide for one's self, according to one's personal standards, 
whether or not it is more sympathetic than that with which we have 
got lastly to grapple in the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas. 



CHAPTER XVI 

SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS 

LONG before Saint Francis's death, in 1226, the French mystics 
had exhausted their energies and the siecle had taken new heart. 
Society could not remain forever balancing between thought and act. 
A few gifted natures could absorb themselves in the absolute, but the 
rest lived for the day, and needed shelter and safety. So the Church 
bent again to its task, and bade the Spaniard Dominic arm new 
levies with the best weapons of science, and flaunt the name of Aris- 
totle on the Church banners along with that of Saint Augustine. The 
year 12 15, which happened to be the date of Magna Charta and other 
easily fixed events, like the birth of Saint Louis, may serve to mark the 
triumph of the schools. The pointed arch revelled at Rheims and the 
Gothic architects reached perfection at Amiens just as Francis died 
at Assisi and Thomas was born at Aquino. The Franciscan Order it- 
self was swept with the stream that Francis tried to dam, and the great 
Franciscan schoolman, Alexander Hales, in 1222, four years before the 
death of Francis, joined the order and began lecturing as though 
Francis himself had lived only to teach scholastic philosophy. 

The rival Dominican champion, Albertus Magnus, began his career 
a little later, in 1228. Born of the noble Swabian family of Bollstadt, 
in 1 193, he drifted, like other schoolmen, to Paris, and the Rue Maitre 
Albert, opposite Notre Dame, still records his fame as a teacher there. 
Thence he passed to a school established by the order at Cologne, 
where he was lecturing with great authority in 1243 when the general 
superior of the order brought up from Italy a young man of the highest 
promise to be trained as his assistant. 

Thomas, the new pupil, was born under the shadow of Monte 



348 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

Cassino In 1226 or 1227. His father, the Count of Aquino, claimed 
descent from the imperial Hne of Swabia ; his mother, from the Norman 
princes of Sicily; so that in him the two most energetic strains in Eu- 
rope met. His social rank was royal, and the order set the highest value 
on it. He took the vows in 1243, and went north at once to help Al- 
bertus at Cologne. In 1245, the order sent Albertus back to Paris, and 
Thomas with him. There he remained till 1248 when he was ordered 
to Cologne as assistant lecturer, and only four years afterwards, at 
twenty-five years old, he was made full professor at Paris. His indus- 
try and activity never rested till his death in 1274, not yet fifty years 
old, when he bequeathed to the Church a mass of manuscKpt that 
tourists will never know enough to estimate except by weight. His 
complete works, repeatedly printed, fill between twenty and thirty 
quarto volumes. For so famous a doctor, this is almost meagre. Unfor- 
tunately his greatest work, the "Summa Theologise," is unfinished 
— like Beauvais Cathedral. 

Perhaps Thomas's success was partly due to his memory which is 
said to have been phenomenal ; for, in an age when cyclopaedias were 
unknown, a cyclopaedic memory must have counted for half the battle 
in these scholastic disputes where authority could be met only by 
authority; but in this case, memory was supported by mind. Out- 
wardly Thomas was heavy and slow in manner, if it is true that his 
companions called him "the big dumb ox of Sicily " ; and in fashionable 
or court circles he did not enjoy reputation for acute sense of humour. 
Saint Louis's household offers a picture not wholly clerical, least of 
all among the King's brothers and sons; and perhaps the dinner- table 
was not much more used then than now to abrupt Interjections of 
theology Into the talk about hunting and hounds ; but however it hap- 
pened, Thomas one day surprised the company by solemnly announc- 
ing — "I have a decisive argument against the Manicheans!" No 
wit or humour could be more to the point — between two saints that 
were to be — than a decisive argument against enemies of Christ, and 




ST. THOMAS AQUINAS 



SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS 349 

one greatly regrets that the rest of the conversation was not reported, 
unless, indeed, it is somewhere in the twenty-eight quarto volumes; 
but it probably lacked humour for courtiers. 

The twenty-eight quarto volumes must be closed books for us. 
None but Dominicans have a right to interpret them. No Franciscan 
— or even Jesuit — understands Saint Thomas exactly or explains him 
with authority. For summer tourists to handle these intricate problems 
in a theological spirit would be altogether absurd; but, for us, these 
great theologians were also architects who undertook to build a Church 
Intellectual, corresponding bit by bit to the Church Administrative, 
both expressing — and expressed by — the Church Architectural. 
Alexander Hales, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, 
and the rest, were artists; and if Saint Thomas happens to stand at 
their head as type, it is not because we choose him or understand him 
better than his rivals, but because his order chose him rather than his 
master Albert, to impose as authority on the Church; and because 
Pope John XXII canonized him on the ground that his decisions were 
miracles; and because the Council of Trent placed his "Summa" 
among the sacred books on their table; and because Innocent VI said 
that his doctrine alone was sure; and finally, because Leo XIII very 
lately made a point of declaring that, on the wings of Saint Thomas's 
genius, human reason has reached the most sublime height it can 
probably ever attain. 

Although the Franciscans, and, later, the Jesuits, have not always 
shown as much admiration as the Dominicans for the genius of Saint 
Thomas, and the mystics have never shown any admiration whatever 
for the philosophy of the schools, the authority of Leo XIII is final, 
at least on one point and the only one that concerns us. Saint Thomas 
is still alive and overshadows as many schools as he ever did; at all 
events, as many as the Church maintains. He has outlived Descartes 
and Leibnitz and a dozen other schools of philosophy more or less 
serious in their day. He has mostly outlived Hume, Voltaire, and the 



350 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

militant sceptics. His method is typical and classic; his sentences, 
when interpreted by the Church, seem, even to an untrained mind, 
intelligible and consistent; his Church Intellectual remains practically 
unchanged, and, like the Cathedral of Beauvais, erect, although the 
storms of six or seven centuries have prostrated, over and over again, 
every other social or political or juristic shelter. Compared with it, 
all modern systems are complex and chaotic, crowded with self-con- 
tradictions, anomalies, impracticable functions and outworn inheri- 
tances; but beyond all their practical shortcomings is their frag- 
mentary character. An economic civilization troubles itself about 
the universe much as a hive of honey-bees troubles about the ocean, 
only as a region to be avoided. The hive of Saint Thomas sheltered 
God and man, mind and matter, the universe and the atom, the one 
and the multiple, within the walls of an harmonious home. 

Theologians, like architects, were supposed to receive their Church 
complete in all its lines; they were modern judges who interpreted the 
law, but never invented it. Saint Thomas merely selected between 
disputed opinions, but he allowed himself to wander very far afield, 
indeed, in search of opinions to dispute. The field embraced all that 
existed, or might have existed, or could never exist. The immense 
structure rested on Aristotle and Saint Augustine at the last, but as a 
work of art it stood alone, like Rheims or Amiens Cathedral, as though 
it had no antecedents. Then, although, like Rheims, its style was never 
meant to suit modern housekeeping and is ill-seen by the Ecole des 
Beaux Arts, it reveals itself in its great mass and intelligence as a work 
of extraordinary genius; a system as admirably proportioned as any 
cathedral and as complete; a success not universal either in art or 
science. 

Saint Thomas's architecture, like any other work of art, is best 
studied by itself as though he created it outright; otherwise a tourist 
would never get beyond its threshold. Beginning with the foundation 
which is God and God's active presence in His Church, Thomas next 



SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS 351 

built God into the walls and towers of His Church, in the Trinity and 
its creation of mind and matter in time and space; then finally he 
filled the Church by uniting mind and matter in man, or man's soul, 
giving to humanity a free will that rose, like the fleche, to heaven. 
The foundation — the structure — the congregation — are enough 
for students of art ; his ideas of law, ethics, and politics ; his vocabulary, 
his syllogisms, his arrangement are, like the drawings of Villard de 
Honnecourt's sketch-book, curious but not vital. After the eleventh- 
century Romanesque Church of Saint Michael came the twelfth-cen- 
tury Transition Church of the Virgin, and all merged and ended at 
last in the thirteenth-century Gothic Cathedral of the Trinity. One 
wants to see the end. 

The foundation of the Christian Church should be — as the simple 
deist might suppose — always the same, but Saint Thomas knew 
better. His foundation was Norman, not French; it spoke the prac- 
tical architect who knew the mathematics of his art, and who saw that 
the foundation laid by Saint Bernard, Saint Victor, Saint Francis, the 
whole mystical, semi-mystical, Cartesian, Spinozan foundation, past 
or future, could not bear the weight of the structure to be put on it. 
Thomas began by sweeping the ground clear of them. God must be a 
concrete thing, not a human thought. God must be proved by the 
senses like any other concrete thing; "nihil est in intellectu quin prius 
fuerit in sensu"; even if Aristotle had not afhrmed the law, Thomas 
would have discovered it. He admitted at once that God could not be 
taken for granted. 

The admission, as every boy-student of the Latin Quarter knew, 
was exceedingly bold and dangerous. The greatest logicians commonly 
shrank from proving unity by multiplicity. Thomas was one of the 
greatest logicians that ever lived ; the question had always been at the 
bottom of theology; he deliberately challenged what every one knew 
to be an extreme peril. If his foundation failed, his Church fell. Many 
critics have thought that he saw dangers four hundred years ahead. 



352 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

The time came, about 1650- 1700, when Descartes, deserting Saint 
Thomas, started afresh with the idea of God as a concept, and at once 
found himself charged with a deity that contained the universe; nor 
did the Cartesians — until Spinoza made it clear — seem able or will- 
ing to see that the Church could not accept this deity because the 
Church required a God who caused the universe. The two deities 
destroyed each other. One was passive; the other active. Thomas 
warned Descartes of a logical quicksand which must necessarily swal- 
low up any Church, and which Spinoza explored to the bottom. 
Thomas said truly that every true cause must be proved as a cause, not 
merely as a sequence ; otherwise they must end in a universal energy or 
substance without causality — a source. 

Whatever God might be to others, to His Church he could not be a 
sequence or a source. That point had been admitted by William of 
Champeaux, and made the division between Christians and infidels. 
On the other hand, if God must be proved as a true cause in order to 
warrant the Church or the State in requiring men to worship Him as 
Creator, the student became the more curious — if a churchman, the 
more anxious ■ — to be assured that Thomas succeeded in his proof, 
especially since he did not satisfy Descartes and still less Pascal. That 
the mystics should be dissatisfied was natural enough, since they were 
committed to the contrary view, but that Descartes should desert was 
a serious blow which threw the French Church into consternation from 
which it never quite recovered. 

"I see motion," said Thomas: "I infer a motor!" This reasoning, 
which may be fifty thousand years old, is as strong as ever it was ; stronger 
than some more modern inferences of science ; but the average mechanic 
stated it differently. "I see motion," he admitted: "I infer energy. 
I see motion everywhere; I infer energy everywhere." Saint Thomas 
barred this door to materialism by adding: "I see motion; I cannot 
infer an infinite series of motors: I can only infer, somewhere at the 
end of the series, an intelligent, fixed motor." The average modern 



SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS 353 

mechanic might not dissent but would certainly hesitate. "No doubt! " 
he might say; "we can conduct our works as well on that as on any 
other theory, or as we could on no theory at all ; but, if you offer it as 
proof, we can only say that we have not yet reduced all motion to one 
source or all energies to one law, much less to one act of creation, 
although we have tried our best." The result of some centuries of 
experiment tended to raise rather than silence doubt, although, even 
in his own day, Thomas would have been scandalized beyond the re- 
sources of his Latin had Saint Bonaventure met him at Saint Louis's 
dinner-table and complimented him, in the King's hearing, on having 
proved, beyond all Franciscan cavils, that the Church Intellectual 
had necessarily but one first cause and creator — himself. 

The Church Intellectual, like the Church Architectural, implied not 
one architect, but myriads, and not one fixed, intelligent architect at 
the end of the series, but a vanishing vista without a beginning at any 
definite moment ; and if Thomas pressed his argument, the twentieth- 
century mechanic who should attend his conferences at the Sorbonne 
would be apt to say so. "What is the use of trying to argue me into it? 
Your inference may be sound logic, but is not proof. Actually we know 
less about it than you did. All we know is the thing we handle, and 
we cannot handle your fixed, intelligent prime motor. To your old 
ideas of form we have added what we call force, and we are rather 
further than ever from reducing the complex to unity. In fact, if you 
are aiming to convince me, I will tell you flatly that I know only the 
multiple, and have no use for unity at all." 

In the thirteenth century men did not depend so much as now on 
actual experiment, but the nominalist said in effect the same thing. 
Unity to him was a pure concept, and any one who thought it real 
would believe that a triangle was alive and could walk on its legs. 
Without proving unity, philosophers saw no way to prove God. They 
could only fall back on an attempt to prove that the concept of unity 
proved itself, and this phantasm drove the Cartesians to drop Thomas's 



354 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

argument and assert that "the mere fact of having within us the idea 
of a thing more perfect than ourselves, proves the real existence of that 
thing." Four hundred years earlier Saint Thomas had replied in ad- 
vance that Descartes wanted to prove altogether too much, and 
Spinoza showed mathematically that Saint Thomas had been in the 
right. The finest religious mind of the time — Pascal — admitted 
it and gave up the struggle, like the mystics of Saint-Victor. 

Thus some of the greatest priests and professors of the Church, 
including Duns Scotus himself, seemed not wholly satisfied that 
Thomas's proof was complete, but most of them admitted that it was 
the safest among possible foundations, and that it showed, as archi- 
tecture, the Norman temper of courage and caution. The Norman 
was ready to run great risks, but he would rather grasp too little than 
too much ; he narrowed the spacing of his piers rather than spread them 
too wide for safe vaulting. Between Norman blood and Breton blood 
was a singular gap, as Renan and every other Breton has delighted to 
point out. Both Abelard and Descartes were Breton. The Breton 
seized more than he could hold ; the Norman took less than he would 
have liked. 

God, then, is proved. What the schools called form, what science 
calls energy, and what the intermediate period called the evidence of 
design, made the foundation of Saint Thomas's cathedral. God is an 
intelligent, fixed prime motor — not a concept, or proved by concepts; 
— a concrete fact, proved by the senses of sight and touch. On that 
foundation Thomas built. The walls and vaults of his Church were 
more complex than the foundation ; especially the towers were trouble- 
some. Dogma, the vital purpose of the Church, required support. The 
most weighty dogma, the central tower of the Norman cathedral, was 
the Trinity, and between the Breton solution which was too heavy, 
and the French solution which was too light, the Norman Thomas 
found a way. Remembering how vehemently the French Church, under 
Saint Bernard, had protected the Trinity from all interference what- 



SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS 355 

ever, one turns anxiously to see what Thomas said about it ; and unless 
one misunderstands him, — as is very likely, indeed, to be the case, 
since no one may even profess to understand the Trinity, — Thomas 
treated it as simply as he could. "God, being conscious of Himself, 
thinks Himself; his thought is Himself, his own reflection in the Verb 
— the so-called Son." "Est in Deo intelligente seipsum Verbum Dei 
quasi Deus intellectus." The idea was not new, and as ideas went it 
was hardly a mystery; but the next step was nai'f : — God, as a double 
consciousness, loves Himself, and realizes Himself in the Holy Ghost. 
The third side of the triangle is love or grace. 

Many theologians have found fault with this treatment of the sub- 
ject, which seemed open to every objection that had been made to 
Abelard, Gilbert de la Poree, or a thousand other logicians. They 
commonly asked why Thomas stopped the Deity's self-realizations at 
love, or inside the triangle, since these realizations were real, not 
symbolic, and the square was at least as real as any other combina- 
tion of line. Thomas replied that knowledge and will — the Verb and 
the Holy Ghost — were alone essential. The reply did not suit every 
one, even among doctors, but since Saint Thomas rested on this 
simple assertion, it is no concern of ours to argue the theology. Only 
as art, one can aflford to say that the form is more architectural than 
religious; it would surely have been suspicious to Saint Bernard. 
Mystery there was none, and logic little. The concept of the Holy 
Ghost was childlike; for a pupil of Aristotle it was inadmissible, since 
it led to nothing and helped no step toward the universe. 

Admitting, if necessary, the criticism, Thomas need not admit the 
blame, if blame there were. Every theologian was obliged to stop the 
pursuit of logic by force, before it dragged him into paganism and pan- 
theism. Theology begins with the universal, — God, — who must be 
a reality, not a symbol; but it is forced to limit the process of God's 
realizations somewhere, or the priest soon becomes a worshipper of 
God in sticks and stones. Theologists had commonly chosen, from time 



356 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

immemorial, to stop at the Trinity; within the triangle they were 
wholly realist; but they could not admit that God went on to realize 
Himself in the square and circle, or that the third rnember of the Trin- 
ity contained multiplicity, because the Trinity was a restless weight 
on the Church piers, which, like the central tower, constantly tended 
to fall, and needed to be lightened. Thomas gave it the lightest form 
possible, and there fixed it. 

Then came his great tour-de-force, the vaulting of his broad nave; 
and, if ignorance is allowed an opinion, even a lost soul may admire 
the grand simplicity of Thomas's scheme. He swept away the hori- 
zontal lines altogether, leaving them barely as a part of decoration. 
The whole weight of his arches fell, as in the latest Gothic, where the 
eye sees nothing to break the sheer spring of the nervures, from the 
rosette on the keystone a hundred feet above down to the church floor. 
In Thomas's creation nothing intervened between God and his world; 
secondary causes become ornaments; only two forces, God and man, 
stood in the Church. 

The chapter of Creation is so serious, and Thomas's creation, like 
every other, is open to so much debate, that no student can allow 
another to explain it; and certainly no man whatever, either saint or 
sceptic, can ever yet have understood Creation aright unless divinely 
inspired; but whatever Thomas's theory was as he meant it, he seems 
to be understood as holding that every created individual — animal, 
vegetable, or mineral — was a special, divine act. Whatever has form 
is created, and whatever is created takes form directly from the will of 
God, which is also his act. The intermediate universals — the second- 
ary causes — vanish as causes; they are, at most, sequences or relations; 
all merge in one universal act of will; instantaneous, infinite, eternal. 

Saint Thomas saw God, much as Milton saw him, resplendent in 

That glorious form, that light tinsufiferable, 

And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty, 
Wherewith he wont, at Heaven's high council-table, 

To sit the midst of Trinal Unity; 



SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS 357 

except that, in Thomas's thought, the council- table was a work-table, 
because God did not take counsel ; He was an act. The Trinity was an 
infinite possibility of will ; nothing within but 

The baby image of the giant mass 
Of things to come at large. 

Neither time nor space, neither matter nor mind, not even force 
existed, nor could any intelligence conceive how, even though they 
should exist, they could be united in the lowest association. A crystal 
was as miraculous as Socrates. Only abstract force, or what the school- 
men called form, existed undeveloped from eternity, like the abstract 
line in mathematics. 

Fifty or a hundred years before Saint Thomas settled the Church 
dogma, a monk of Citeaux or some other abbey, a certain Alain of 
Lille, had written a Latin poem, as abstruse an allegory as the best, 
which had the merit of painting the scene of man's creation as far as 
concerned the mechanical process much as Thomas seems to have seen 
it. M. Haureau has printed an extract (vol. i, p. 352). Alain con- 
ceded to the weakness of human thought, that God was working in 
time and space, or rather on His throne in heaven, when nature, pro- 
posing to create a new and improved man, sent Reason and Prudence 
up to ask Him for a soul to fit the new body. Having passed through 
various adventures and much scholastic instruction, the messenger 
Prudence arrived, after having dropped her dangerous friend Reason 
by the way. The request was respectfully presented to God, and 
favourably received. God promised the soul, and at once sent His ser- 
vant Noys — Thought — to the storehouse of ideas, to choose it : — 

Ipse Deus rem prosequitur, producit in actum God Himself pursues the task, and sets in act 

Quod pepigit. Vocat ergo Noym quae prae- What He promised. So He calls Noys to seek 

paert Uli A copy of His will, Idea of the human mind, 

Numinis exemplar, humanre mentis Idaeam, To whose form the spirit should be shaped, 

Ad cujus formam formetur spiritus omni Rich in every virtue, which, veiled in garb 

Munere virtutum dives, qui, nube caducae Of frail flesh, is to be hidden in a shade of body, 

Carnis odumbratus veletur corporis umbra. Then Noys, at the King's order, turning one 
Tunc Noys ad regis praeceptum singula rerum by one 



358 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

Vestigans exempla, novam perquirit Idaeam, Each sample, seeks the new Idea. 

Inter tot species, speciem vix invenit illam Among so many images she hardly finds that 

Quam petit; oflfertur tandem quaesita petenti. Which she seeks; at last the sought one appears. 

Hanc formam Noys ipsa Deo praesentat ut ejus This form Noys herself brings to God for Him 

Formet ad exemplar animam. Tunc ille To form a soul to its pattern. He takes the 

sigillum seal, 

Sumit, ad ipsius formae vestigia formam And gives form to the soul after the model 

Dans animae, vultum qualem deposcit Idaea Of the form itself, stamping on the sample 

Imprimit exemplo; totas usurpat imago The figure such as the Idea requires. The seal 

Exemplaris opes, loquiturque figura sigil- Covers the whole field, and the impression 

lum. expresses the stamp. 

The translation is probably full of mistakes; indeed, one is permitted 
to doubt whether Alain himself accurately understood the process ; but 
in substance he meant that God contained a storehouse of ideas, and 
stamped each creation with one of these forms. The poets used a va- 
riety of figures to help out their logic, but that of the potter and his 
pot was one of the most common. Omar Khayyam was using it at the 
same time with Alain of Lille, but with a difference: for his pot seems 
to have been matter alone, and his soul was the wine it received from 
God; while Alain's soul seems to have been the form and not the con- 
tents of the pot. 

The figure matters little. In any case God's act was the union of 
mind with matter by the same act or will which created both. No 
intermediate cause or condition intervened ; no secondary influence had 
anything whatever to do with the result. Time had nothing to do with 
it. Every individual that has existed or shall exist was created by the 
same instantaneous act, for all time. "When the question regards the 
universal agent who produces beings and time, we cannot consider him 
as acting now and before, according to the succession of time." God 
emanated time, force, matter, mind, as He might emanate gravitation, 
not as a part of His substance but as an energy of His will, and main- 
tains them in their activity by the same act, not by a new one. Every 
individual is a part of the direct act; not a secondary outcome. The 
soul has no father or mother. Of all errors one of the most serious is 
to suppose that the soul descends by generation. "Having life and 



SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS 359 

action of Its own, it subsists without the body; ... it must therefore 
be produced directly, and since it is not a material substance, it cannot 
be produced by way of generation ; it must necessarily be created by 
God. Consequently to suppose that the intelligence [or intelligent 
soul] is the effect of generation is to suppose that it is not a pure and 
simple substance, but corruptible like the body. It is therefore heresy 
to say that this soul is transmitted by generation." What is true of 
the soul should be true of all other form, since no form is a material 
substance. The utmost possible relation between any two individuals 
is that God may have used the same stamp or mould for a series of 
creations, and especially for the less spiritual: "God is the first model 
for all things. One may also say that, among His creatures some serve 
as types or models for others because there are some which are made 
in the image of others"; but generation means sequence, not cause. 
The only true cause is God. Creation is His sole act, in which no sec- 
ond cause can share. " Creation is more perfect and loftier than gen- 
eration, because it aims at producing the whole substance of the 
being, though it starts from absolute nothing." 

Thomas Aquinas, when he pleased, was singularly lucid, and on this 
point he was particularly positive. The architect insisted on the con- 
trolling idea of his structure. The Church was God, and its lines ex- 
cluded interference. God and the Church embraced all the converging 
lines of the universe, and the universe showed none but lines that con- 
verged. Between God and man, nothing whatever intervened. The 
individual was a compound of form, or soul, and matter; but both 
were always created together, by the same act, out of nothing. "Sim- 
pliciter fatendum est animas simul cum corporibus creari et infundi." 
It must be distinctly understood that souls were not created before 
bodies, but that they were created at the same time as the bodies they 
animate. Nothing whatever preceded this union of two substances 
which did not exist: "Creatio est productio alicujus rei secundum 
suam totam substantiam, nullo prsesupposito, quod sit vel increatum 



360 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

vel ab aliquo creatum." Language can go no further in exclusion of 
every possible preceding, secondary, or subsequent cause, "Productio 
universalis entis a Deo non est motus nee mutatio, sed est quaedam 
simplex emanatio." The whole universe is, so to speak, a simple 
emanation from God. 

The famous junction, then, is made! — that celebrated fusion of the 
universal with the individual, of unity with multiplicity, of God and 
nature, which had broken the neck of every philosophy ever invented; 
which had ruined William of Champeaux and was to ruin Descartes; 
this evolution of the finite from the infinite was accomplished. The 
supreme triumph was as easily effected by Thomas Aquinas as it was 
to be again effected, four hundred years later, by Spinoza. He had 
merely to assert the fact: "It is so! it cannot be otherwise!" "For 
the thousandth and hundred-thousandth time; — what is the use of 
discussing this prime motor, this Spinozan substance, any longer? We 
know it is there! " that — as Professor Haeckel very justly repeats for 
the millionth time — is enough. 

One point, however, remained undetermined. The Prime Motor and 
His action stood fixed, and no one wished to disturb Him; but this was 
not the point that had disturbed William of Champeaux. Abelard's 
question still remained to be answered. How did Socrates differ from 
Plato — Judas from John — Thomas Aquinas from Prof essor Haeckel ? 
Were they, in fact, two, or one? What made an individual? What was 
God's centimetre measure? The abstract form or soul which existed as 
a possibility in God, from all time, — was it one or many? To the 
Church, this issue overshadowed all else, for, if humanity was one and 
riot multiple, the Church, which dealt only with individuals, was lost. 
To the schools, also, the issue was vital, for, if the soul or form was 
already multiple from the first, unity was lost; the ultimate substance 
and prime motor itself became multiple; the whole issue was reopened. 

To the consternation of the Church, and even of his own order, 
Thomas, following closely his masters, Albert and Aristotle, asserted 



SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS 361 

that the soul was measured by matter. " Division occurs in substances 
in ratio of quantity, as Aristotle says in his 'Physics.' And so di- 
mensional quantity is a principle of individuation." The soul is a 
fluid absorbed by matter in proportion to the absorptive power of the 
matter,. The soul is an energy existing in matter proportionately to the 
dimensional quantity of the matter. The soul is a wine, greater or less 
in quantity according to the size of the cup. In our report of the great 
debate of mo, between Champeaux and Abelard, we have seen William 
persistently tempting Abelard to fall into this admission that matter 
made the man; — that the universal equilateral triangle became an 
individual if it were shaped in metal, the matter giving it reality which 
mere form could not give; and Abelard evading the issue as though 
his life depended on it. In fact, had Abelard dared to follow Aristotle 
into what looked like an admission that Socrates and Plato were iden- 
tical as form and differed only in weight, his life might have been the 
forfeit. How Saint Thomas escaped is a question closely connected 
with the same inquiry about Saint Francis of Assisi. A Church which 
embraced, with equal sympathy , and within a hundred years, the Vir- 
gin, Saint Bernard, William of Champeaux and the School of Saint- 
Victor, Peter the Venerable, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Dominic, 
Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Saint Bonaventure, was more liberal than 
any modern State can afford to be. Radical contradictions the State 
may perhaps tolerate, though hardly, but never embrace or profess. 
Such elasticity long ago vanished from human thought. 

Yet only Dominicans believe that the Church adopted this law of 
individualization, or even assented to it. If M. Jourdalin is right, 
Thomas was quickly obliged to give it another form : — that, though 
all souls belonged to the same species, they differed in their aptitudes 
for uniting with particular bodies. "This soul is commensurate with 
this body, and not with that other one." The idea is double; for either 
the souls individualized themselves, and Thomas abandoned his doc- 
trine of their instantaneous creation, with the bodies, out of nothing; 



362 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

or God individualized them in tlie act of creation, and matter had no- 
thing to do with it. The difficulty is no concern of ours, but the great 
scholars who took upon themselves to explain it made it worse, until 
at last one gathers only that Saint Thomas held one of three views: 
either the soul of humanity was individualized by God, or it individ- 
ualized itself, or it was divided by ratio of quantity, that is, by matter. 
This amounts to saying that one knows nothing about it, which we 
knew before and may admit with calmness; but Thomas Aquinas was 
not so happily placed, between the Church and the schools. Human- 
ity had a form common to itself, which made it what it was. By some 
means this form was associated with matter; in fact, matter was only 
known as associated with form. If, then, God, by an instantaneous 
act, created matter and gave it form according to the dimensions of 
the matter, innocent ignorance might infer that there was, in the act 
of God, one world-soul and one world-matter, which He united in dif- 
ferent proportions to make men and things. Such a doctrine was fatal 
to the Church. No greater heresy could be charged against the worst 
Arab or Jew, and Thomas was so well aware of his danger that he re- 
coiled from it with a vehemence not at all in keeping with his supposed 
phlegm. With feverish eagerness to get clear of such companions, he 
denied and denounced, in all companies, in season and out of season, 
the idea that intellect was one and the same for all men, differing only 
with the quantity of matter it accompanied. He challenged the ad- 
herent of such a doctrine to battle; "let him take the pen if he dares!" 
No one dared, seeing that even Jews enjoyed a share of common sense 
and had seen some of their friends burn at the stake not very long 
before for such opinions, not even openly maintained; while unedu- 
cated people, who are perhaps incapable of receiving intellect at all, 
but for whose instruction and salvation the great work of Saint 
Thomas and his scholars must chiefly exist, cannot do battle because 
they cannot understand Thomas's doctrine of matter and form which 
to them seems frank pantheism. 



SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS 363 

So it appeared to Duns Scotus also, if one may assert in the Doctor 
Subtilis any opinion without qualification. Duns began his career 
only about 1300, after Thomas's death, and stands, therefore, beyond 
our horizon ; but he is still the pride of the Franciscan Order and stands 
second in authority to the great Dominican alone. In denying Thomas's 
doctrine that matter individualizes mind. Duns laid himself open to 
the worse charge of investing matter with a certain embryonic, inde- 
pendent, shadowy soul of its own. Scot's system, compared with that 
of Thomas, tended toward liberty. Scot held that the excess of power 
in Thomas's prime motor neutralized the power of his secondary causes, 
so that these appeared altogether superfluous. This is a point that 
ought to be left to the Church to decide, but there can be no harm in 
quoting, on the other hand, the authority of some of Scot's critics 
within the Church, who have thought that his doctrine tended to deify 
matter and to keep open the road to Spinoza. Narrow and dangerous 
was the border-line always between pantheism and materialism, and 
the chief interest of the schools was in finding fault with each other's 
paths. 

The opinions in themselves need not disturb us, although the ques- 
tion is as open to dispute as ever it was and perhaps as much disputed ; 
but the turn of Thomas's mind is worth study. A century or two 
later, his passion to be reasonable, scientific, architectural would 
have brought him within range of the Inquisition. Francis of Assisi 
was not more archaic and cave-dweller than Thomas of Aquino was 
modern and scientific. In his effort to be logical he forced his Deity to 
be as logical as himself, which hardly suited Omnipotence. He hewed 
the Church dogmas into shape as though they were rough stones. About 
no dogma could mankind feel interest more acute than about that of 
immortality, which seemed to be the single point vitally necessary for 
any Church to prove and define as clearly as light itself. Thomas 
trimmed down the soul to half its legitimate claims as an immortal 
being by insisting that God created it from nothing in the same act or 



364 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

will by which He created the body and united the two in time and 
space. The soul existed as form for the body, and had no previous 
existence. Logic seemed to require that when the body died and dis- 
solved, after the union which had lasted, at most, only an instant or 
two of eternity, the soul, which fitted that body and no other, should 
dissolve with it. In that case the Church dissolved, too, since it had 
no reason for existence except the soul. Thomas met the difficulty 
by suggesting that the body's form might take permanence from the 
matter to which it gave form. That matter should individualize mind 
was itself a violent wrench of logic, but that it should also give per- 
manence — the one quality it did not possess — to this individual 
mind seemed to many learned doctors a scandal. Perhaps Thomas 
meant to leave the responsibility on the Church, where it belonged as 
a matter not of logic but of revealed truth. At all events, this treat- 
ment of mind and matter brought him into trouble which few modern 
logicians would suspect. 

The human soul having become a person by contact with matter, 
and having gained eternal personality by the momentary union, was 
finished, and remains to this day for practical purposes unchanged; but 
the angels and devils, a world of realities then more real than man, 
were never united with matter, and therefore could not be persons. 
Thomas admitted and insisted that the angels, being immaterial, — 
neither clothed in matter, nor stamped on it, nor mixed with it, — were 
universals ; that is, each was a species in himself, a class, or perhaps 
what would be now called an energy, with no other individuality than 
, he gave himself. 

The idea seems to modern science reasonable enough. Science has to 
deal, for example, with scores of chemical energies which it knows 
little about except that they always seem to be constant to the same 
conditions; but every one knows that in the particular relation of 
mind to matter the battle is as furious as ever. The soul has always 
refused to live in peace with the body. The angels, too, were always 



SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS 365 

In rebellion. They insisted on personality, and the devils even more 
obstinately than the angels. The dispute was — and Is — far from 
trifling. Mind would rather Ignore matter altogether. In the thir- 
teenth century mind did, Indeed, admit that matter was something, 
— which It quite refuses to admit in the twentieth, — but treated it 
as a nuisance to be abated. To the pure In spirit one argued In vain 
that spirit must compromise; that nature compromised; that God 
compromised ; that man himself was nothing but a somewhat clumsy 
compromise. No argument served. Mind insisted on absolute des- 
potism. Schoolmen as well as mystics would not believe that matter 
was what It seemed, — If, Indeed, It existed; — unsubstantial, shifty, 
shadowy; changing with Incredible swiftness Into dust, gas, flame; 
vanishing In mysterious lines of force into space beyond hope of 
recovery; whirled about in eternity and infinity by that mind, form, 
energy, or thought which guides and rules and tyrannizes and is the 
universe. The Church wanted to be pure spirit; she regarded matter 
with antipathy as something foul, to be held at arms' length lest It 
should stain and corrupt the soul ; the most she would willingly admit 
was that mind and matter might travel side by side, like a double- 
headed comet, on parallel lines that never met, with a preestabllshed 
harmony that existed only In the prime motor. 

Thomas and his master Albert were almost alone In Imposing on 
the Church the compromise so necessary for Its equilibrium. The 
balance of matter against mind was the same necessity In the Church 
Intellectual as the balance of thrusts In the arch of the Gothic cathe- 
dral. Nowhere did Thomas show his architectural obstinacy quite so 
plainly as In thus taking matter under his protection. Nothing would 
induce him to compromise with the angels. He insisted on keeping 
man wholly apart, as a complex of energies In which matter shared 
equally with mind. The Church must rest firmly on both. The angels 
differed from other beings below them precisely because they were im- 
material and Impersonal. Such rigid logic outraged the spiritual Church. 



366 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

Perhaps Thomas's sudden death in 1274 alone saved him from the 
fate of Abelard, but it did not save his doctrine. Two years afterwards, 
in 1276, the French and English churches combined to condemn it. 
Etienne Tempier, Bishop of Paris, presided over the French Synod; 
Robert Kilwardeby, of the Dominican Order, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, presided over the Council at Oxford. The synods were composed 
of schoolmen as well as churchmen, and seem to have been the result 
of a serious struggle for power between the Dominican and Francis- 
can Orders. Apparently the Church compromised between them by 
condemning the errors of both. Some of these errors, springing from 
Alexander Hales and his Franciscan schools, were in effect the foun- 
dation of another Church. Some were expressly charged against 
Brother Thomas. "Contra fratrem Thomam" the councils forbade 
teaching that — "quia intelligentiae non habent materiam, Deus non 
potest plures ejusdem speciei facere; et quod materia non est in ange- 
lis"; further, the councils struck at the vital centre of Thomas's sys- 
tem, — "quod Deus non potest individua multiplicare sub una 
specie sine materia"; and again in its broadest form, — "quod formae 
non accipiunt divisionem nisi secundam materiam." These condem- 
nations made a great stir. Old Albertus Magnus, who was the real 
victim of attack, fought for himself and for Thomas. After a long and 
earnest effort, the Thomists rooted out opposition in the order, and 
carried their campaign to Rome. After fifty years of struggle, by use 
of every method known in Church politics, the Dominican Order, in 
1323, caused John XXII to canonize Thomas and in effect aiftrm his 
doctrine. 

^ The story shows how modern, how heterodox, how material, how 
altogether new and revolutionary the system of Saint Thomas seemed 
at first even in the schools; but that was the affair of the Church and 
a matter of pure theology. We study only his art. Step by step, stone 
by stone, we see him build his church-building like a stonemason, 
"with the care that the twelfth-century architects put into" their work, 



SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS 367 

as Viollet-le-Duc saw some similar architect at Rouen, building the 
tower of Saint- Remain: "He has thrown over his work the grace and 
finesse, the study of detail, the sobriety in projections, the perfect har- 
mony," which belongs to his school, and yet he was rigidly structural 
and Norman. The foundation showed it; the elevation, which is God, 
developed it; the vaulting, with its balance of thrusts in mind and 
matter, proved it; but he had still the hardest task in art, to model 
man. 

The cathedral, then, is built, and God is built into it, but, thus 
far, God is there alone, filling it all, and maintains the equilibrium by 
balancing created matter separately against created mind. The pro- 
portions of the building are superb ; nothing so lofty, so large in treat- 
ment, so true in scale, so eloquent of multiplicity in unity, has ever 
been conceived elsewhere ; but it was the virtue or the fault of superb 
structures like Bourges and Amiens and the Church universal that 
they seemed to need man more than man needed them; they were 
made for crowds, for thousands and tens of thousands of human beings; 
for the whole human race, on its knees, hungry for pardon and love. 
Chartres needed no crowd, for it was meant as a palace of the Virgin, 
and the Virgin filled it wholly; but the Trinity made their church for 
no other purpose than to accommodate man, and made man for no 
other purpose than to fill their church; if man failed to fill it, the 
church and the Trinity seemed equally failures. Empty, Bourges and 
Beauvais are cold; hardly as religious as a wayside cross; and yet, 
even empty, they are perhaps more religious than when filled with 
cattle and machines. Saint Thomas needed to fill his Church with real 
men, and although he had created his own God for that special pur- 
pose, the task was, as every boy knew by heart, the most difficult that 
Omnipotence had dealt with. 

God, as Descartes justly said, we know! but what is man? The 
schools answered: Man is a rational animal! So was apparently a dog, 
or a bee, or a beaver, none of which seemed to need churches. Modern 



368 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

science, with infinite effort, has discovered and announced that man 
is a bewildering complex of energies, which helps little to explain his 
relations with the ultimate substance or energy or prime motor whose 
existence both science and schoolmen admit; which science studies in 
laboratories and religion worships in churches. The man whom God 
created to fill his Church, must be an energy independent of God; 
otherwise God filled his own Church with his own energy. Thus far, 
the God of Saint Thomas was alone in His Church. The beings He had 
created out of nothing — Omar's pipkins of clay and shape — stood 
against the walls, waiting to receive the wine of life, a life of their own. 
Of that life, energy, will, or wine, — whatever the poets or professors 
called it, — God was the only cause, as He was also the immediate 
cause, and support. Thomas was emphatic on that point. God is 
the cause of energy as the sun is the cause of colour: "prout sol d,ici- 
tur causa manifestationis coloris." He not only gives forms to his pip- 
kins, or energies to his agents, but He also maintains those forms in 
being: ** dat formas creaturis agentibus et eas tenet in esse." He acts 
directly, not through secondary causes, on everything and every one : 
"Deus in omnibus intime operatur." If, for an instant, God's ac- 
tion, which is also His will, were to stop, the universe would not merely 
fall to pieces, but would vanish, and must then be created anew from 
nothing: "Quia non habet radicem in aere, statim cessat lumen, 
cessante actione solis. Sic autem se habet omnis creatura ad Deum 
sicut aer ad solem illuminantem." God radiates energy as the sun 
radiates light, and "the whole fabric of nature would return to no- 
thing" if that radiation ceased even for an instant. Everything is 
created by one instantaneous, eternal, universal act of will, and by the 
same act is maintained in being. 

Where, then, — in what mysterious cave outside of creation, — 
could man, and his free will, and his private world of responsibilities 
and duties, lie hidden? Unless man was a free agent in a world of his 
own beyond constraint the Church was a fraud, and it helped little 



SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS 369 

to add that the State was another. If God was the sole and immediate 
cause and support of everything in His creation, God was also the cause 
of its defects, and could not — being Justice and Goodness in essence 
— hold man responsible for His own omissions. Still less could the 
State or Church do it in His name. 

Whatever truth lies in the charge that the schools discussed futile 
questions by faulty methods, one cannot decently deny that in this 
case the question was practical and the method vital. Theist or atheist, 
monist or anarchist must all admit that society and science are equally 
interested with theology in deciding whether the universe is one or 
many, a harmony or a discord. The Church and State asserted that 
it was a harmony, and that they were its representatives. They say 
so still. Their claim led to singular but unavoidable conclusions, 
with which society has struggled for seven hundred years, and is still 
struggling. 

Freedom could not exist in nature, or even in God, after the single, 
unalterable act or will which created. The only possible free will was 
that of God before the act. Abelard with his rigid logic averred that 
God had no freedom ; being Himself whatever is most perfect. He pro- 
duced necessarily the most perfect possible world. Nothing seemed 
more logical, but if God acted necessarily, His world must also be of 
necessity the only possible product of His act, and the Church became 
an impertinence, since man proved only fatuity by attempting to 
interfere. Thomas dared not disturb the foundations of the Church, 
and therefore began by laying down the law that God — previous to His 
act — could choose, and had chosen, whatever scheme of creation He 
pleased, and that the harmony of the actual scheme proved His per- 
fections. Thus he saved God's free will. 

This philosophical apse would have closed the lines and finished the 
plan of his church-choir had the universe not shown some divergencies 
or discords needing to be explained. The student of the Latin Quarter 
was then harder to convince than now that God was Infinite Love and 



370 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

His world a perfect harmony, when perfect love and harmony showed 
them, even in the Latin Quarter, and still more in revealed truth, a 
picture of suffering, sorrow, and death; plague, pestilence, and famine; 
inundations, droughts, and frosts; catastrophes world-wide and acci- 
dents in corners; cruelty, perversity, stupidity, uncertainty, insanity; 
virtue begetting vice; vice working for good; happiness without sense, 
selfishness without gain, misery without cause, and horrors undefined. 
The students in public dared not ask, as Voltaire did, " avec son hideux 
sourire," whether the Lisbon earthquake was the final proof of God's 
infinite goodness, but in private they used the argumentum ad per- 
sonam divinam freely enough, and when the Church told them that 
evil did not exist, the ribalds laughed. 

Saint Augustine certainly tempted Satan when he fastened the 
Church to this doctrine that evil is only the privation of good, an 
amissio honi; and that good alone exists. The point was infinitely 
troublesome. Good was order, law, unity. Evil was disorder, anarchy, 
multiplicity. Which was truth? The Church had committed itself to 
the dogma that order and unity were the ultimate truth, and that the 
anarchist should be burned. She could do nothing else, and society 
supported her — still supports her; yet the Church, who was wiser 
than the State, had always seen that Saint Augustine dealt with only 
half the question. She knew that evil might be an excess of good 
as well as absence of it; that good leads to evil, evil to good; and 
that, as Pascal says, "three degrees of polar elevation upset all juris- 
prudence; a meridian decides truth; fundamental laws change; rights 
have epochs. Pleasing Justice! bounded by a river or a mountain! 
truths on this side the Pyrenees! errors beyond!" Thomas conceded 
that God Himself, with the best intentions, might be the source of evil, 
and pleaded only that his action might in the end work benefits. He 
could offer no proof of it, but he could assume as probable a plan 
of good which became the more perfect for the very reason that it 
allowed great liberty in detail. 



SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS 371 

One hardly feels Saint Thomas here in all his force. He offers 
suggestion rather than proof; — apology — the weaker because of 
obvious effort to apologize — rather than defence, for Infinite Good- 
ness, Justice, and Power; scoffers might add that he invented a new 
proof ab defectu, or argument for proving the perfection of a machine 
by the number of its imperfections; but at all events, society has 
never done better by way of proving its right to enforce morals or 
unity of opinion. Unless it asserts law, it can only assert force. Rigid 
theology went much further. In God's providence, man was as nothing. 
With a proper sense of duty, every solar system should be content to 
suffer, if thereby the efficiency of the Milky Way were improved. Such 
theology shocked Saint Thomas, who never wholly abandoned man 
in order to exalt God. He persistently brought God and man together, 
and if he erred, the Church rightly pardons him because he erred on 
the human side. Whenever the path lay through the valley of despair 
he called God to his aid, as though he felt the moral obligation of the 
Creator to help His creation. 

At best the vision of God, sitting forever at His work-table, willing 
the existence of mankind exactly as it is, while conscious that, among 
these myriad arbitrary creations of His will, hardly one in a million 
could escape temporary misery or eternal damnation, was not the best 
possible background for a Church, as the Virgin and the Saviour 
frankly admitted by taking the foreground; but the Church was not 
responsible for it. Mankind could not admit an anarchical — a dual 
or a multiple — universe. The world was there, staring them in the 
face, with all its chaotic conditions, and society insisted on its unity 
in self-defence. Society still insists on treating it as unity, though no 
longer affecting logic. Society insists on its free will, although free will 
has never been explained to the satisfaction of any but those who much 
wish to be satisfied, and although the words in any common sense 
implied not unity but duality in creation. The Church had nothing 
to do with inventing this riddle — the oldest that fretted mankind. 



372 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

Apart from all theological interferences, — fall of Adam or fault of 
Eve, Atonement, Justification, or Redemption, — either the universe 
was one, or it was two, or it was many; either energy was one, seen 
only in powers of itself, or it was several ; either God was harmony, or 
He was discord. With practical unanimity, mankind rejected the dual 
or multiple scheme; it insisted on unity. Thomas took the question 
as it was given him. The unity was full of defects; he did not deny 
them; but he claimed that they might be incidents, and that the ad- 
mitted unity might even prove their beneficence. Granting this 
enormous concession, he still needed a means of bringing into the sys- 
tem one element which vehemently refused to be brought : — that is, 
Man himself, who insisted that the universe was a unit, but that he 
was a universe; that energy was one, but that he was another energy; 
that God was omnipotent, but that man was free. The contradiction 
had always existed, exists still, and always must exist, unless man 
either admits that he is a machine, or agrees that anarchy and chaos 
are the habit of nature, and law and order its accident. The agree- 
ment may become possible, but it was not possible in the thirteenth 
century nor is it now. Saint Thomas's settlement could not be a 
simple one or final, except for practical use, but it served, and it holds 
good still. 

No one ever seriously affirmed the literal freedom of will. Absolute 
liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the 
ideally free individual is responsible only to himself. This principle is 
the philosophical foundation of anarchism, and, for anything that 
science has yet proved, may be the philosophical foundation of the 
universe; but it is fatal to all society and is especially hostile to the 
State. Perhaps the Church of the thirteenth century might have found 
a way to use even this principle for a good purpose ; certainly, the 
influence of Saint Bernard was sufficiently unsocial and that of Saint 
Francis was sufficiently unselfish to conciliate even anarchists of the 
militant class; but Saint Thomas was working for the Church and the 



SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS 373 

State, not for the salvation of souls, and his chief object was to repress 
anarchy. The theory of absolute free will never entered his mind, more 
than the theory of material free will would enter the mind of an archi- 
tect. The Church gave him no warrant for discussing the subject 
in such a sense. In fact, the Church never admitted free will, or used 
the word when it could be avoided. In Latin, the term used was 
"liberum arbitrium," — free choice, — and in French to this day it 
remains in strictness **libre arbitre" still. From Saint Augustine 
downwards the Church was never so unscientific as to admit of liberty 
beyond the faculty of choosing between paths, some leading through 
the Church and some not, but all leading to the next world ; as a crimi- 
nal might be allowed the liberty of choosing between the guillotine and 
the gallows, without infringing on the supremacy of the judge. 

Thomas started from that point, already far from theoretic freedom. 
"We are masters of our acts," he began, "in the sense that we can 
choose such and such a thing; now, we have not to choose our end, but 
the means that relate to it, as Aristotle says." Unfortunately, even 
this trenchant amputation of man's free energies would not accord 
with fact or with logic. Experience proved that man's power of choice 
In action was very far from absolute, and logic seemed to require that 
every choice should have some predetermining cause which decided 
the will to act. Science affirmed that choice was not free, — could not 
be free, — without abandoning the unity of force and the foundation 
of law. Society insisted that its choice must be left free, whatever 
became of science or unity. Saint Thomas was required to illustrate 
the theory of "liberum arbitrium" by choosing a path through these 
difficulties, where path there was obviously none. 

Thomas's method of treating this problem was sure to be as scientific 
as the vaulting of a Gothic arch. Indeed, one follows it most easily 
by translating his school-vocabulary into modern technical terms. 
With very slight straining of equivalents, Thomas might now be written 
thus : — 



374 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

By the term God, is meant a prime motor which suppHes all energy 
to the universe, and acts directly on man as well as on all other 
creatures, moving him as a mechanical motor might do ; but man, be- 
ing specially provided with an organism more complex than the organ- 
isms of other creatures, enjoys an exceptional capacity for reflex action, 
— a power of reflection, — which enables him within certain limits to 
choose between paths; and this singular capacity is called free choice 
or free will. Of course, the reflection is not choice, and though a man's 
mind reflected as perfectly as the facets of a lighthouse lantern, it 
would never reach a choice without an energy which impels it to act. 

Now let us read Saint Thomas : — 

Some kind of an agent is required to determine one's choice; that agent is 
reflection. Man reflects, then, in order to learn what choice to make between the 
two acts which offer themselves. But reflection is, in its turn, a faculty of doing 
opposite things, for we can reflect or not reflect; and we are no further forward 
than before. One cannot carry back this process infinitely, for in that case one 
would never decide. The fixed point is not in man, since we meet in him, as a being 
apart by himself, only the alternative faculties; we must, therefore, recur to the 
intervention of an exterior agent who shall impress on our will a movement cap- 
able of putting an end to its hesitations: — That exterior agent is nothing else 
than God! 

The scheme seems to differ little, and unwillingly, from a system of 
dynamics as modern as the dynamo. Even in the prime motor, from 
the moment of action, freedom of will vanished. Creation was not suc- 
cessive; it was one instantaneous thought and act, identical with the 
will, and was complete and unchangeable from end to end, including 
time as one of its functions. Thomas was as clear as possible on that 
point: — "Supposing God wills anything in effect; He cannot will not 
to will it, because His will cannot change." He wills that some things 
shall be contingent and others necessary, but He wills in the same act 
that the contingency shall be necessary. "They are contingent because 
God has willed them to be so, and with this object has subjected them 
to causes which are so." In the same way He wills that His creation 
shall develop itself in time and space and sequence, but He creates 



SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS 375 

these conditions as well as the events. He creates the whole, in one 
act, complete, unchangeable, and it is then unfolded like a rolling 
panorama, with its predetermined contingencies. 

Man's free choice — liberum arbitrium — falls easily into place as 
a predetermined contingency. God is the first cause, and acts in all 
secondary causes directly; but while He acts mechanically on the rest 
of creation, — as far as is known, — He acts freely at one point, and 
this free action remains free as far as it extends on that line. Man's 
freedom derives from this source, but it is simply apparent, as far as 
he is a cause; it is a reflex action determined by a new agency of the 
first cause. 

However abstruse these ideas may once have sounded, they are far 
from seeming difficult in comparison with modern theories of energy. 
Indeed, measured by that standard, the only striking feature of Saint 
Thomas's motor is its simplicity. Thomas's prime motor was very 
powerful, and its lines of energy were infinite. Among these infinite 
lines, a certain group ran to the human race, and, as long as the con- 
duction was perfect, each man acted mechanically. In cases where the 
current, for any reason, was for a moment checked, — that is to say, 
produced the effect of hesitation or reflection in the mind, — the cur- 
rent accumulated until it acquired power to leap the obstacle. As Saint 
Thomas expressed it, the Prime Motor, Who was nothing else than 
God, intervened to decide the channel of the current. The only differ- 
ence between man and a vegetable was the reflex action of the com- 
plicated mirror which was called mind, and the mark of mind was 
reflective absorption or choice. The apparent freedom was an illusion 
arising from the extreme delicacy of the machine, but the motive 
power was in fact the same — that of God. 

This exclusion of what men commonly called freedom was carried 
still further in the process of explaining dogma. Supposing the con- 
duction to be insufficient for a given purpose; a purpose which shall 
require perfect conduction? Under ordinary circumstances, in ninety- 



376 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

nine cases out of a hundred, the conductor will be burned out, so to 
speak; condemned, and thrown away. This is the case with most 
human beings. Yet there are cases where the conductor is capable of 
receiving an increase of energy from the prime motor, which enables 
it to attain the object aimed at. In dogma, this store of reserved energy 
is technically called Grace. In the strict, theological sense of the word, 
as it is used by Saint Thomas, the exact, literal meaning of Grace is 
"amotion which the Prime Motor, as a supernatural cause, produces 
in the soul, perfecting free will." It is a reserved energy, which comes 
to aid and reinforce the normal energy of the battery. 

To religious minds this scientific inversion of solemn truths seems, 
and is, sacrilege; but Thomas's numerous critics in the Church have 
always brought precisely this charge against his doctrine, and are 
doing so still. They insist that he has reduced God to a mechanism 
and man to a passive conductor of force. He has left, they say, nothing 
but God in the universe. The terrible word which annihilates all other 
philosophical systems against which it is hurled, has been hurled freely 
against his for six hundred years and more, without visibly affecting 
the Church ; and yet its propriety seems, to the vulgar, beyond reason- 
able cavil. To Father de Regnon, of the extremely learned and intelli- 
gent Society of Jesus, the difference between pantheism and Thomism 
reduces itself to this: " Pantheism, starting from the notion of an infin- 
ite substance which is the plenitude of being, concludes that there 
can exist no other beings than the being; no other realities than the 
absolute reality. Thomism, starting from the efiicacy of the first cause, 
tends to reduce more and more the efficacy of second causes, and to 
replace it by a passivity which receives without producing, which is 
determined without determining." To students of architecture, who 
know equally little about pantheism and about Thomism, — or, 
indeed, for that matter, about architecture, too, — the quality that 
rouses most surprise in Thomism is its astonishingly scientific method. 
The Franciscans and the Jesuits call it pantheism, but science, too, is 



SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS 377 

pantheism, or has till very recently been wholly pantheistic. Avowedly 
science has aimed at nothing but the reduction of multiplicity to unity, 
and has excommunicated, as though it were itself a Church, any one 
who doubted or disputed its object, its method, or its results. The 
effort is as evident and quite as laborious in modern science, starting 
as it does from multiplicity, as in Thomas Aquinas, who started from 
unity ; and it is necessarily less successful, for its true aims, as far as it is 
science and not disguised religion, were equally attained by reaching 
infinite complexity; but the assertion or assumption of ultimate unity 
has characterized the Law of Energy as emphatically as it has char- 
acterized the definition of God in theology. If it is a reproach to Saint 
Thomas, it is equally a reproach to Clerk-Maxwell. In truth, it is what 
men most admire in both — the power of broad and lofty generalization. 
Under any conceivable system the process of getting God and man 
under the same roof — of bringing two independent energies under 
the same control — required a painful effort, as science has much 
cause to know. No doubt, many good Christians and some heretics 
have been shocked at the tour de force by which they felt themselves 
suddenly seized, bound hand and foot, attached to each other, and 
dragged into the Church, without consent or consultation. To reli- 
gious mystics, whose scepticism concerned chiefly themselves and their 
own existence, Saint Thomas's man seemed hardly worth herding, at 
so much expense and trouble, into a Church where he was not eager to 
go. True religion felt the nearness of God without caring to see the 
mechanism. Mystics like Saint Bernard, Saint Francis, Saint Bona- 
venture, or Pascal had a right to make this objection, since they got 
into the Church, so to speak, by breaking through the windows; but 
society at large accepted and retains Saint Thomas's man much as 
Saint Thomas delivered him to the Government; a two-sided being, 
free or unfree, responsible or irresponsible, an energy or a victim of 
energy, moved by choice or moved by compulsion, as the interests of 
society seemed for the moment to need. Certainly Saint Thomas 



378 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

lavished no excess of liberty on the man he created, but still he was 
more generous than the State has ever been. Saint Thomas asked 
little from man, and gave much; even as much freedom of will as the 
State gave or now gives ; he added immortality hereafter and eternal 
happiness under reasonable restraints; his God watched over man's 
temporal welfare far more anxiously than the State has ever done, and 
assigned him space in the Church which he never can have in the 
galleries of Parliament or Congress; more than all this, Saint Thomas 
and his God placed man in the centre of the universe, and made the 
sun and the stars for his uses. No statute law ever did as much for 
man, and no social reform ever will try to do it; yet man bitterly com- 
plained that he had not his rights, and even in the Church is still com- 
plaining, because Saint Thomas set a limit, more or less vague, to what 
the man was obstinate in calling his freedom of will. 

Thus Saint Thomas completed his work, keeping his converging 
lines clear and pure throughout, and bringing them together, unbroken, 
in the curves that gave unity to his plan. His sense of scale and pro- 
portion was that of the great architects of his age. One might go on 
studying it for a lifetime. He showed no more hesitation in keeping 
his Deity in scale than in adjusting man to it. Strange as it sounds, 
although man thought himself hardly treated in respect to freedom, 
yet, if freedom meant superiority, man was in action much the 
superior of God, Whose freedom suffered, from Saint Thomas, under 
restraints that man never would have tolerated. Saint Thomas did 
not allow God even an undetermined will ; He was pure Act, and as 
such He could not change. Man alone was allowed, in act, to change 
direction. What was more curious still, man might absolutely prove 
his freedom by refusing to move at all ; if he did not like his life he could 
stop it, and habitually did so, or acquiesced in its being done for him ; 
while God could not commit suicide or even cease for a single instant 
His continuous action. If man had the singular fancy of making him- 
self absurd, — a taste confined to himself but attested by evidence 



SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS 379 

exceedingly strong, — he could be as absurd as he liked ; but God 
could not be absurd. Saint Thomas did not allow the Deity the right 
to contradict Himself, which is one of man's chief pleasures. While 
man enjoyed what was, for his purposes, an unlimited freedom to be 
wicked, — a privilege which, as both Church and State bitterly com- 
plained and still complain, he has outrageously abused, — God was 
Goodness, and could be nothing else. While man moved about his 
relatively spacious prison with a certain degree of ease, God, being 
everywhere, could not move. In one respect, at least, man's freedom 
seemed to be not relative but absolute, for his thought was an energy 
paying no regard to space or time or order or object or sense; but God's 
thought was His act and will at once ; speaking correctly, God could not 
think; He is. Saint Thomas would not, or could not, admit that God 
was Necessity, as Abelard seems to have held, but he refused to toler- 
ate the idea of a divine maniac, free from moral obligation to himself. 
The atmosphere of Saint Louis surrounds the God of Saint Thomas, 
and its pure ether shuts out the corruption and pollution to come, — 
the Valois and Bourbons, the Occams and Hobbes's, the Tudors and 
the Medicis, of an enlightened Europe. 

The theology turns always into art at the last, and ends in aspira- 
tion. The spire justifies the church. In Saint Thomas's Church, man's 
free will was the aspiration to God, and he treated it as the architects 
of Chartres and Laon had treated their famous fieches. The square 
foundation-tower, the expression of God's power in act, — His Creation, 
— rose to the level of the Church fagade as a part of the normal unity 
of God's energy; and then, suddenly, without show of ejffort, without 
break, without logical violence, became a many-sided, voluntary, 
vanishing human soul, and neither Villard de Honnecourt nor Duns 
Scotus could distinguish where God's power ends and man's free will 
begins. All they saw was the soul vanishing into the skies. How it 
was done, one does not care to ask; in a result so exquisite, one has not 
the heart to find fault with "adresse." 



38o MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

About Saint Thomas's theology we need not greatly disturb our- 
selves; it can matter now not much, whether he put more pantheism 
than the law allowed or more materialism than Duns Scotus approved 
— or less of either — into his universe, since the Church is still on 
the spot, responsible for its own doctrines ; but his architecture is an- 
other matter. So scientific and structural a method was never an acci- 
dent or the property of a single mind even with Aristotle to prompt it. 
Neither his Church nor the architect's church was a sketch, but a com- 
pletely studied structure. Every relation of parts, every disturbance 
of equilibrium, every detail of construction was treated with infinite 
labour, as the result of two hundred years of experiment and discussion 
among thousands of men whose minds and whose instincts were acute, 
and who discussed little else. Science and art were one. Thomas 
Aquinas would probably have built a better cathedral at Beauvais 
than the actual architect who planned it ; but it is quite likely that the 
architect might have saved Thomas some of his errors, as pointed out 
by the Councils of 1276. Both were great artists; perhaps in their 
professions, the greatest that ever lived; and both must have been 
great students beyond their practice. Both were subject to constant 
criticism from men and bodies of men whose minds were as acute and 
whose learning was as great as their own. If the Archbishop of Can- 
terbury and the Bishop of Paris condemned Thomas, the Bernardines 
had, for near two hundred years, condemned Beauvais in advance. 
Both the "Summa Theologise" and Beauvais Cathedral were exces- 
sively modern, scientific, and technical, marking the extreme points 
reached by Europe on the lines of scholastic science. This is all we 
need to know. If we like, we can go on to study, inch by inch, the slow 
decline of the art. The essence of it — the despotic central idea — was 
that of organic unity both in the thought and the building. From that 
time, the universe has steadily become more complex and less re- 
ducible to a central control. With as much obstinacy as though it were 
human, it has insisted on expanding its parts; with as much elusive- 



SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS 381 

ness as though it were feminine, it has evaded the attempt to impose on 
it a single will. Modern science, like modern art, tends, in practice, 
to drop the dogma of organic unity. Some of the mediaeval habit of 
mind survives, but even that is said to be yielding before the daily 
evidence of increasing and extending complexity. The fault, then, was 
not in man, if he no longer looked at science or art as an organic whole 
or as the expression of unity. Unity turned itself into complexity, 
multiplicity, variety, and even contradiction. All experience, human 
and divine, assured man in the thirteenth century that the lines of the 
universe converged. How was he to know that these lines ran in every 
conceivable and inconceivable direction, and that at least half of them 
seemed to diverge from any imaginable centre of unity! Dimly conscious 
that his Trinity required in logic a fourth dimension, how was the 
schoolman to supply it, when even the mathematician of to-day can 
only infer its necessity? Naturally man tended to lose his sense of scale 
and relation. A straight line, or a combination of straight lines, may 
have still a sort of artistic unity, but what can be done in art with a 
series of negative symbols? Even if the negative were continuous, the 
artist might express at least a negation; but supposing that Omar's 
kinetic analogy of the ball and the players turned out to be a scientific 
formula ! — supposing that the highest scientific authority, in order to 
obtain any unity at all, had to resort to the Middle Ages for an imagi- 
nary demon to sort his atoms ! — how could art deal with such prob- 
lems, and what wonder that art lost unity with philosophy and science ! 
Art had to be confused in order to express confusion; but perhaps it 
was truest, so. 

Some future summer, when you are older, and when I have left, 
like Omar, only the empty glass of my scholasticism for you to turn 
down, you can amuse yourselves by going on with the story after the 
death of Saint Louis, Saint Thomas, and William of Lorris, and after 
the failure of Beauvais. The pathetic interest of the drama deepens 
with every new expression, but at least you can learn from it that 



382 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES 

your parents in the nineteenth century were not to blame for losing 
the sense of unity in art. As early as the fourteenth century, signs of 
unsteadiness appeared, and, before the eighteenth century, unity be- 
came only a reminiscence. The old habit of centralizing a strain at one 
point, and then dividing and subdividing it, and distributing it on 
visible lines of support to a visible foundation, disappeared in archi- 
tecture soon after 1500, but lingered in theology two centuries longer, 
and even, in very old-fashioned communities, far down to our own 
time; but its values were forgotten, and it survived chiefly as a stock 
jest against the clergy. The passage between the two epochs is as 
beautiful as the Slave of Michael Angelo; but, to feel its beauty, you 
should see it from above, as it came from its radiant source. Truth, 
indeed, may not exist; science avers it to be only a relation; but what 
men took for truth stares one everywhere in the eye and begs for sym- 
pathy. The architects of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries took the 
Church and the universe for truths, and tried to express them in a 
structure which should be final. Knowing by an enormous experience 
precisely where the strains were to come, they enlarged their scale to 
the utmost point of material endurance, lightening the load and dis- 
tributing the burden until the gutters and gargoyles that seem mere 
ornament, and the grotesques that seem rude absurdities, all do work 
either for the arch or for the eye; and every inch of material, up and 
down, from crypt to vault, from man to God, from the universe to the 
atom, had its task, giving support where support was needed, or weight 
where concentration was felt, but always with the condition of showing 
conspicuously to the eye the great lines which led to unity and the 
curves which controlled divergence; so that, from the cross on the 
fl^che and the keystone of the vault, down through the ribbed nervures, 
the columns, the windows, to the foundation of the flying buttresses 
far beyond the walls, one idea controlled every line; and this is true 
of Saint Thomas's Church as it is of Amiens Cathedral. The method 
was the same for both, and the result was an art marked by singular 



SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS 383 

unity, which endured and served its purpose until man changed his 
attitude toward the universe. The trouble was not in the art or the 
method or the structure, but in the universe itself which presented 
different aspects as man moved. Granted a Church, Saint Thomas's 
Church was the most expressive that man has made, and the great 
Gothic cathedrals were its most complete expression. 

Perhaps the best proof of it is their apparent instability. Of all 
the elaborate symbolism which has been suggested for the Gothic 
cathedral, the most vital and most perfect may be that the slender 
nervure, the springing motion of the broken arch, the leap downwards 
of the flying buttress, — the visible effort to throw off a visible strain, 
— never let us forget that Faith alone supports it, and that, if Faith 
fails. Heaven is lost. The equilibrium is visibly delicate beyond the 
line of safety; danger lurks in every stone. The peril of the heavy 
tower, of the restless vault, of the vagrant buttress; the uncertainty 
of logic, the inequalities of the syllogism, the irregularities of the 
mental mirror, — all these haunting nightmares of the Church are 
expressed as strongly by the Gothic cathedral as though it had been 
the cry of human suffering, and as no emotion had ever been expressed 
before or is likely to find expression again. The delight of its aspira- 
tions is flung up to the sky. The pathos of its self-distrust and anguish 
of doubt is buried in the earth as its last secret. You can read out of it 
whatever else pleases your youth and confidence; to me, this is all. 



THE END 



INDEX 



Aaron, window at Chartres, i86. 
Abbatial buildings, 37. 
Abbaye-aux- Dames and Abbaye-aux-Hom- 
mes at Caen, 6, 52, 200. 

de Citeaux, 38, 42, 92, 287. 

de Clairvaux, 36, 38, 42, 92, 281. 

de Cluny, 38, 42. 

de Saint Gildas-de-Rhuys, 309-318. 

de Saint-Leu-d'Esserent, 58, 59, 64, 116, 
214. 

de Saint- Victor, 292, 325, 332, 333. 

de Saint-Denis. {See Saint-Denis.) 
Abbot, rank and duties of, 38. 
Abelard, Pierre du Pallet, 36, 139, 140, 174, 
249, 322. 

his hymns to the Virgin, 93, 255. 

his love-songs, 220, 286. 

his statement of the Virgin's rank in 
theology, 257. 

his origin and career, 288-318. 

his Historia Calamitatum, 290-316. 

his gloss on Porphyry, 300. 

his condemnation in 1121, 306, 316. 

his condemnation in 1 140, 316, 317. 

his death, 318. 

{See Heloise, Peter the Venerable, Saint 
Bernard, William of Champeaux, 
Suger, John of Salisbury.) 
Abraham and Isaac, in the north porch of 

Chartres Cathedral, 84, 117, 183. 
Abydos, 100. 

Acquitaine. {See Guienne.) 
Adam, mystery play, 206. 
Adam de Saint-Victor, 93, 117, 326. 

his hymns to the Virgin, 96, 97, 329, 

331- 
to the Trinity, 326. 
to the Holy Ghost, 327. 
on scholasticism, 328. 
miracle of, 330. 
epitaph of, 333. 
Adam de la Halle, 235, 242, 253, 255. 

his play of Robin and Marion, 242-46. 
Agnes Sorel, 246. 
Alain of Lille, 357, 358. 



Albertus Magnus, Doctor universalis, 288, 
347, 348, 366. 
his liber de laudibus, 93, 143. 
his collected works, 258. 
Albi, cathedral at, 109. 
Alda, in the Chanson de Roland, 23, 30, 34. 
Alexander H, Pope, 4. 
Alexander Hales, 347. 
Alexandrine gingerbread, 217. 
Alfonso of Portugal, 82. 
Alix, Duchess of Brittany, married to Pierre 

de Dreux, 85, 88, 182. 
Alix de Champagne, queen of Louis VH of 

France (i 160-1206), 150, 152, 212. 
Alix de France, married to Count Thibaut 

of Chartres, 150, 152, 203, 212, 223. 
Alix de France, affianced to Richard Coeur-de- 

Lion, 212. 
Alix of Savoy, queen of Louis VI of France, 

74, 78, 203. 
Almogenes. {See Hermogenes.) 
Amaury de Montfort, at Chartres, 156. 
Amboise, chateau of, 42. 
Amiens Cathedral (Notre Dame), 47, 49, 71, 
89, 91, 192, 322, 347, 350, 367. 
Beau Christ of, i. 
statuary of, 79, 80, 100. 
height of vault, r.09. 
rose window of, 115. 
apse of, 125. 
Thierry, Bishop of, 104. 
Ane qui vielle, loi, 128. 
Angels, hierarchy of, window at Chartres, 
181, 184. 
not individual but species, 364-65. 
Angers, hall of bishop's palace, 36. 
chateau of, 42. 

cathedral of (Saint Maurice), 116; glass 
of, 136. 
Angevin school, 109. 

Anjou, County of, in the Chanson de Roland, 27. 
Geoffroy Plantagenet of, 203, 211. 
Henry of, King of England, 210, 211; 
marries Eleanor of Guienne, 212. 
Anne. {See Saint Anne.) 



386 



INDEX 



Anne, Duchess of Brittany, Queen of France 

(1476-1514), 91. 
Antioch, 211. 

Apocalypse, figures of, 72, 187. 
Apses and choirs, 10, 50, 100, 1 18-127. 
Aquilon, the, at Mont-Saint- Michel, 33, 34, 

307. 
Aquino, the birthplace of Saint Thomas, 164, 

338, 348. 
Arab philosophy, 175, 305, 362. 
Arcs boutants. {See Buttressing.) 
Arcs doubleaux and arcs formerets, 35. 
Argenteuil, abbey of, 309. 
Aristotle, at Chartres, 73, 93. 

his attraction to French thought, 141, 
175, 176, 290, 295, 351, 360, 361. 

bridled, 205. 

his authority in the schools, 294, 313, 321. 

adopted by the Church, 347, 350, 351, 
355. 360, 373. 
Aries, architectural school of, 60; sculptures, 

70. 
Arlette, mother of William the Bastard, 53. 
Armancourt. "Notes heraldiques et gene- 

alogiques, 1908," 156, 157. 
Arnold, Matthew, 334. 
Arques, chateau of, 42. 
Arts, the seven liberal, 73, 93. 
Assisi {see Francis), 12. 

church at, 109. 

country of, 334. 
Assumption of the Virgin, 79. 
Aucassins et Nicolete, 157, 219, 230-41, 276, 

277, 278. 
Aufin, dauphin, fou, in chess, 205. 
Augustine. {See Saint Augustine.) 
Autun, cathedral of (Saint Lazare), 70, 71. 
Auvergne, architectural school of, 61, 119. 
Auxerre, 94, 310. 

cathedral of (Saint-Etienne), glass at, 
146, 159, 162. 

clocher de Saint-Germain, 49, 65. 
Ave Maria, 259, 275, 281. 

Stella Maris, 34, 93, 97, 329, 330. 
Averroes, 140, 307, 315. 
Avicenna, 141, 315. 
Avignon, 225. 
Avranches, 2, 36. 

Bacon, Lord Verulam, 3ij». rejected the 
syllogism, 335, 336, 338. 



Bakers' window at Chartres, 172, 181. 
Baronius, his Ecclesiastical Annals, 165. 
Barry, Madame du, 9, 250. 
Bath, the, in the Middle Ages, 242. 
Battle Abbey, roll of, 21. 
Battle-cries, 34, 94. 

Bayeux, cathedral of (Notre Dame), 91. 
its towers, 7, 51, 53, 54, 65. 
tapestry of Queen Matilda, 18, 19. 
eleventh-century architecture, 4, 32. 
Beam, 94. 

Beaucaire. {See Aucassins.) 
Beauce, plain of, 62, 137. 
Beaugency, on the Loire, 211. 
Beaumont, in Normandy, I, 12. 

in Le Perche, 158. 
Beauvais, cathedral of (Saint- Pierre), 9, 99, 
no, 192, 334, 348, 350, 367, 380, 381. 
apse of, 125. 

church of Saint-Etienne, rose of, 116. 
Abbey of Saint Lucien, 310. 
architects of cathedral, 51, 379. 
Beaux Arts, Ecole des, 35, 109, no, 350. 
Belle Verriere, window at Chartres, 146, 147, 

149, 161, 181. 
Benedictines, 4, 12, 342, 343. 
Benoist, Norman chronicle of, 18, 22. 
Benoit-sur-Loire, church of, 5, 6. 
Bercheres I'Evqeue, quarry of, 104, 116, 

162. 
Berenger, sieur du Pallet, father of Abelard, 

288. 
Bernard {see Saint Bernard), Abbot of Clair- 
vaux (1090-1153), 12, 34, 36, 49, 106, 
129, 161, 163, 202, 210, 213, 281, 282, 
322. 
his crusade, 103. 
his hymns and sermons, 92, 93, 96, 255, 

_ 278, 330. 
his origin, 287. 

establishes Clairvaux, 92, 303, 308. 
his controversy with Abelard, 293-318. 
his political authority, 202, 310-317. 
described by Heloise, 287. 
described by Peter the Venerable, 318. 
his controversy with Gilbert de la Poree, 

320. 
his rules, 342, 343. ^ 
Berou, Robert de, his window, 155. 
Bestiaries, loi. 
Bibliotheque Nationale, 66, 129. 



INDEX 



387 



Blanche of Castile (i 187-1252), queen of 
Louis VIII, mother of Saint Louis, 78, 
81, 82, 88, 117, 144, 156, 201, 207, 273, 

275- 

her influence at Chartres, 117, 144, 166, 
181, 193. 

her quarrel with the students, 175, 275. 

her rose window at Chartres, 185, 186. 

genealogical table of, 203. 

her relations with Thibaut of Cham- 
pagne, 155, 189, 225-229, 253. 

her marriage to Louis VIII, 224. 

queen and regent, 224, 225, 334. 
Blois, city of, 211. 

hall of chateau, 42. 

apartments of, 91. 
Blondel, 231. 

Blue, value of, 130, 131, 135, 154. 
Bluebeard, 207. 

Bollstadt in Swabia, Counts of, 347. 
Bonaventure, Saint, 353, 377. 
Boscherville, in Normandy, 53, 65. 
Bosham, port of Chichester, 18. 
Boulogne, Countess Mahaut, or Matilda, of, 

81, 82. 
Bourbon kings of France (1589-1793), 91, 255. 
Bourdillon, F. W., 230. 
Bourges, cathedral of (Saint- Etienne), 47, 89, 
102, no, 193. 

apse of, 124, 125. 

Last Judgment, at, 71. 

Monograph on, 95, 129, 175. 

twelfth-century glass at, 136, 137. 

thirteenth-century glass at, 166, 173, 175. 

fifteenth- and sixteenth-century glass at, 
192. 
Bourgogne, 94. 
Bramante, 67. 
Bridan, Charles Antoine, sculptor (1767-73), 

155. 156. 
Brittany, Province of, 5, 27, 37, 174, 189. 
{See Abelard.) 
Dukes and Duchesses of: 

Conan III (11 12-48), 308. 
Alix (1203-21), married in 1212 to 

Pierre of Dreux, 85, 88. 
death in 1221, 189. 
her son, John I (1237-86), 189. 
her daughter Yolande, 155, 189, 253. 
Pierre de Dreux (Mauclerc), Duke 

(1212-36), 85-88, 102, 117, 144, 184- 



89; on the seventh crusade in 1248, 
254- 
Anne, Queen of France (1488-1514), 91. 
Buddha, Sakya Muni, 257, 326. 
Bullant, Jean, 67. 

Bulteau, Abbe, his Monographie de la Cathe- 
drale de Chartres, 35, 73, 77, 82, 87, 
88, 95, no, 154. 
Burgundy, architectural school of, 60. 
Butchers' windows at Chartres, etc., 173, 182. 
Buttressing, 109. 
Byzantium, 8, 32, 71, 75, 91. 
Virgin of, 91, 95. 
influence of, on glass, 134-35. 

Caen in Normandy, 6, 11, 52. 
towers of, 49, 52. 

Caheu, or Caieu, Ansel de, 150, 222. 

Cairo, 134, 137, 140. 

Calixtus II, his supposed decree of 11 22 
declaring the Pseudo-Turpin authentic, 
168. 

Calvados, 3. 

Cantico del sole, 344-46. 

Carpenters and Coopers, their window at 
Chartres, 171. 

Carteret in Normandy, 5. 

Castile {see Blanche and Ferdinand), arms of, 
162, 184. 

Catherine of Medicis, Queen of France, 91. 

Caumont, Arcis de, his Histoire de V Architec- 
ture Religieuse, 51. 

Cefalu, cathedral, 4. 

Cerisy-la-Foret, 10, 51. 

Cervantes, 230. {See Quixote.) 

Chalons-sur-Marne, glass at, 136-37. 

Champagne, County of, 213, 217. 
Counts of: 

Henry (tii8o), 152, 202, 212. 
Henry (1150-97), 202, 223. 
Thibaut (ti20i), 152, 202, 223. 
Thibaut-le-Grand (1201-53), 152, 155, 
203, 224, 226, 231, 233; affianced to 
Yolande of Brittany, 155, 189-90; 
his poems, 227-29. 
Countess Marie de France (tii98), 150, 
152; her marriage to Henry of Cham- 
pagne (1164), 212, 213; her influence 
on poetry, 214, 218, 219; object of 
Coeur-de-Lion's prison-song, 220-23; 
widowu^ bd and death, 223. 



388 



INDEX 



Champeaux, William of, 286; his disputes 
with Abelard, 290-303; patron of 
Saint Bernard, 303. 
Chanson de Roland, 5, 12, 17, 20-31, 35, 47, 
168, 214; examples of the grand style, 
25, 267; unreligious, 233; free from 
grossness, 241; evangel of Saint 
Francis, 335, 336. 
Chansons de Geste, 17, 245, 258. 
Chardonnel, Geoffroi, 172. 
Charente, architecture of, 48, 60. 
Charlemagne, defeated at Roncesvalles (778), 
5, 20. 
window at Chartres, 12, 168, 170, 176, 

177, 193, 218, 231. 
never sainted, 168. 
in the first lines of the Chanson, 23. 
in the last plaint of Roland, 26, 28, 30. 
friend of Constantine VI, 32, 169. 
ideal of Saint Francis, 12, 325, 336. 
Charles VII, King of France (1422-61), 210, 

246. 
Chartres, County of, 56, 60, 100. 
Counts of: 
Thibaut (tii97), 150, 152, 203, 211, 

212. 
Louis (ti205), 151-52, 203, 223. 
Thibaut VI (ti2i8), 150, 152, 154, 181, 
203. 
Countesses of: 
Alix de France, 150, 152, 203, 212, 223. 
Isabel, 203. 
Bishops of, 154, 175, 177. {See Regnault 
de Moujon, John of Salisbury.) 
Chartres, Shrine of, 6, 123, 144-45. 

Virgin of, always the Virgin of Majesty, 

72, 95-103. 144-48. 
her presence always felt, 105-12, 113, 
128, 144, 147-48. 
Chartres Cathedral. (Notre Dame.) 
monograph on. {See Bulteau.) 
guide-book of, 180. {See Clerval, Abb6.) 
meaning of, 89, 90, 95, 106, 108, 180-95, 

325- 338. 
rebuilt in 1 145, 103, 105. 
rebuilt, 1 195-1220, 40, 149, 154-58. 
its solidity, 9, 104, no. 
architecture and statuary of: 

west portal, 6, 33, 35, 63, 69-72, 92, 
108, 112, 129, 139, 141, 146, 147, 
204, 287, 289. 



southern tower and fl^che, 10, 49, 51, 

54, 62, 64, 65-68, 103, 112. 
northern tower and fleche, 62, 66, 113. 
arcade of kings, 63. 
north porch, 63, 77-81, 184. 
south porch, 63, 77, 84-88. 
height of vault, no. 
> vaulting of choir and apse, 119-27, 

159-67. 
nave and transepts, no, 112, 129, 181. 
western rose, 63, 66, 112, 116, 117, 

141-42. 
northern rose, 116, 117, 143, 
southern rose, 117, 143. 
fenestration of, 99, 114. 
buttresses of, 109. 
glass of: 

twelfth-century, 129-42. 
thirteenth-century, in western rose, 

142-45. 
n the Rose de France, 143, 185-90. 
,n the Rose de Dreux, 143, 184-93. 
n the apse, 149, 177. 
n the nave, 180. 
n the transepts, 181. 
n the clerestory, 181-84, I92- 
above the high-altar, 192-96. 
fifteenth-century. Chapel of Vendome, 
181. 
Chartres, church of Saint-Pierre in lower 

town, glass of, 195. 
Chatelet at Mont-Saint-Michel, 45. 
Chatillon, Gaultier or Gaucher, 82. 
Chatillon, Jean de, 155. 
Chaucer, his Canterbury Pilgrimage, 16. 
his Wife of Bath, 201. 
his Legend of Good Women, 206. 
his translations, 247-51. 
Chess, game of, 204. 
Chinon, chateau of, 210, 231. 
Choirs and apses, 10, 50, 118-27, 149, 179. 
Christ, at Amiens, i. 

at Mont-Saint-Michel, 8. 

at Byzantium, 71. 

at Chartres, 71, 79, 84, 85, 102, 133-34, 

163, 164, 183, 187. 
absorbed in the Mother, 94-96, 262. 
in the Trinity, 92, 274, 306, 307. 
forgotten by Roland, 29. 
reincarnated at Assisi, 338. 
Christian of Troyes, 139, 214, 231. 



INDEX 



389 



his Eric et Enide, 214. 
his Tristan, 214, 215-19. 
his Lancelot, 215, 220. 
his Perceval, 21 s-ig. 
Church of the eleventh century, 3, 7, 285, 286. 
of the twelfth century, 71, 302-18, 341, 

344-45. {See Abelard, St. Bernard.) 
of the thirteenth century, 71, loi, 226, 
248, 341, 361, 377-81. (See Thomas 
Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Saint Francis.) 
secular tastes of, 9. 

its attitude towards the Virgin and the 
Holy Ghost, 80, 96, 262, 305, 341. 
Citeaux, Abbey of, 38, 42, 92, 287, 303, 308. 
Clairet, a drink, 217. 

Clairvaux, Abbey of, founded by Saint Ber- 
nard in 1 1 15, 36, 38, 42, 92, 281, 308, 

318, 334-^ 
Clemens vitrearius Carnotensis, 172. 
Clement, Jacques, 256. 
Clerk-Maxwell, James, 315, 377. 
Clermont-Ferrand (Puy-de-Dome), church of 
Notre Dame du Port, 6, 70, 119. 
cathedral (Notre Dame), 67, 171. 
Clerval, Abbe, his guidebook of Chartres, 180. 
Clochers. {See Towers.) 
Cloisters, at Mont-Saint-Michel, 44. 
Cluny, Abbey of, 38, 42, 309, 317, 
Cogito ergo sum, 323. 
Cologne, Dominican school of, 140, 348. 
Comnenus, John, Basileus, 92, 96. 
Conan, Duke of Brittany, 308. 
Conceptualism, 296, 297, 299-302, 306, 323, 

353- 
Conches in Normandy, 157, 209. 
Conciergerie, Galerie Saint-Louis, 42. 
Constantine VI, Emperor of the East, 

32, 169. 
Constantinople, 27, 91 {see Byzantium); 

French Emperors of, 157. 
Cordeliers at Paris, 334. 
Cornard, Robert, inventor of pointed shoes, 

204. 
Cornificii, 322. 

Coronation of the Virgin, 78, 79. 
Corroyer, Edouard, Description de VAbhaye 

du Mont-Saint-Michel (1887), 2, 11, 

12, 39, 41, 51. 
Cotentin, 2, 3. 
Coucy, chateau of, 42. 
battle-cry of, 94. 



chatelain de, 231. 
Enguerrand de, 153, 190. 
Couesnon, river boundary of Normandy and 

Brittany, 20. 
Councils, Church, at Ephesus (431), 91. 

at Soissons (1121), condemns Abelard, 

360, 317. 
at Etampes (1130), 310. 
at Pisa (1135). 312. 
at Sens (1140), condemns Abelard, 315- 

18, 320. 
at Rheims (1148), condemns Gilbert de 

la Poree, 320. 
at Beaugency (1152), divorces Eleanor 

of Guienne, 211. 
at Paris (1276), condemns Thomas of 

Aquino, 366. 
at Oxford (1276), condemns Thomas of 

Aquino, 366. 
at Trent (1545-63), 349- 
Court of Love, 213, 221, 246, 334. 
Courtenay, Pierre de, and Isabel, 157. 
Courteous Love, religion of, 213, 214. 
drama of, 226. 
poetry of, 214, 219, 226-50. 
Courtesy, figure of, in the Roman de la Rose, 

Cousin, Victor, editor of Abelard's works, 314. 
Coutances, 2, 3, 7, 91. 

cathedral of (Notre Dame), apse, 49, 50; 
fleches, 47-51; central tower, 51. 
Crusade, the first (1096), 32, 69, 70, 92, 288. 

the second (1147), 68, 92, 104. 

the third (1190), 230. ^ 

the seventh (1248), 85, 254. 
Crypt, of Chartres, i, 9, 34, iii, 149, 283. 

examples of, 34. 

Gros Piliers, 11, 35. 
Curriers' window at Chartres, 181. 

Damietta, 157, 253. 

Daniel saved from the lions, 29; in Chartres 

window, 187. 
Dante, 93, 213, 214, 219, 226, 252; his prayer 

to the Virgin, 251. 
David, King, at Chartres, 84, 186. 
Delacroix, Eugene, 138. 
Descartes, Rene, 323, 349, 352, 360, 367, 
Dialectics, science of, 289. 
Diane de Poitiers, 67. 
Dies Irce, 329, 331-32. 



390 



INDEX 



Domfront in Normandy, 36. 

Dominic (Domingo de Guzman), Saint (1170- 

1221), 175, 342, 343, 347. 
Dominican Schools, 343, 347, 348, 349, 366. 
Don Quixote, 215, 230, 269. 
Drapers' window at Chartres, 173, 181. 
Dreux, County of. (See Pierre Mauclerc.) 
Duns Scotus, doctor subtilis, 349, 363, 380. 
Durand, Paul, on Chartres glass, 129, 134, 

136. 
Durazzo, 157. 
Durendal, Roland's sword, 26-28, 170. 

Edward the Confessor, King of England, 18. 
Egidio, Franciscan monk, 338. 
Egypt, Joinville in, 253, 254. 
Eleanor of Guienne, Queen of France and 
England (i 122-1202), 36, 68, 77, 150, 
151, 152, 199, 213, 231, 313. 
genealogical tables of, 152, 203. 
story of her life, 202, 224, 225. 
her death, 151, 224. 
Elizabeth, Queen of England, 202, 264. 
Energy, equivalent to scholastic Form, 332. 
England, Norman conquest of, 2, 4, 9, 32. 
her share in mediaeval literature, 140. 
her civil war in 1215-16, 151, 153. 
Enlart, Camille, Manuel d' Architecture Reli- 

gieuse, 34, 60. 
Eracle, poem by Walter of Arras, 215. 
Eric et Enide, poem by Christian of Troyes, 

214. 
Eructavit, translation of psalm, 215. 
Etampes (Seine-et-Oise), its church of Notre 

Dame, 65, 116. 
Euclid, 73, 294, 295. 
Eustace, Saint, window of, at Chartres, 172, 

173- 
Eve, 198, 202, 277. 

her dialogue with Satan, 205-206. 
Evesham, battle of, 156. 
Evil, an Amissio Boni, 370. 
Evreux in Normandy, 209. 
Ezekiel, in Chartres window, 187. 

Fabliaux, 200, 245, 
Fair Rosamund, 212. 
Falaise, tower of, 10, 53, 54. 
Faraday, Michael, 315, 321. 
Fenestration, at the Merveille, 41, 42. 
at Paris, Mantes, and Chartres, 56. 



at Mantes, 56, 57. 

at Chartres, 41, 56, 57, 99, 114. 
Fenioux on the Charente, fieche of, 48. 
Ferdinand of Castile, {See Saint Ferdinand.) 
Ferragus, giant, 171. 
Feversham, Abbot of, 310. 
Filetus. {See Hermogenes.) 
Fioretti or Floretum of Saint Francis, 164, 

338. 
Flaubert, Gustave, his Norman style, 55. 
Fleches, in Normandy, 6, 10, 48-52. 

at Coutances, 47-52. 

at Vendome, 49. 

at Auxerre, 49. 

at Fenioux, 48, 

in the lie de France, 58. 

{See Chartres, Laon, Towers, etc.) 
Fontevrault, Abbey of, 42, 224. 
Form, scholastic term meaning that which 
gives being to matter; the equivalent 
of Energy, 320. 
France {see lie de France), battle-cry of, 34, 

94. 
Francis I, King of France (1515-47), 67, 242. 
Francis of Assisi, Saint, 12, 164, 213. 

his birth, 334; his death, 334, 346. 

his hostility to the Schools, 334-46. 

his sermon to the birds, 44, 339, 340. 

his pantheism, 340-46. 

his Cantico del Sole, 344, 345. 
Franciscan Schools, 286, 347, 349. 
Free Will, liberum arbitrium, 286, 300, 323, 

371. 376. 
Freeman, Edward A., his History of the Nor- 
man Conquest, 19, 200. 
Fulbert, canon of Notre Dame de Paris, 36. 
Fulk of Anjou, 222. 
Furriers' window at Chartres, 168, 172, 173. 

Gaillard, ch&teau of, 42. 
Ganelon, the traitor, 23. 
Garreau, L., his Etat social de la France au 

temps des Croisades, 199. 
Gascony, 68, 69. (See Guienne.) 
Gassicourt, church below Mantes, 55. 
Gaucher, or Gaul tier, de Bar-sur-Seine, 157. 
Gaucher, or Gaultier, de Chatillon, 82. 
Gaultier de Coincy, his Miracles de la Vierge, 

258, 259, 272, 278, 328. 
Geoff roy d' Anjou, 203, 211. 
Geoffroy Gaimer, chronicles of, 22. 



INDEX 



391 



Geofifroy III, Comte du Perche, 150, 222, 223. 

Gesu, church of, at Rome, 34. 

Gilbert de la Poree, Bishop of Poitiers, 320, 

321. 
Gildas. {See Saint Gildas-de-Rhuys.) 
Glass. {See Windows.) 
God, definitions of: 

by Saint Gregory the Great, 285. 

by Bishop Hildebert of Le Mans, 285. 

by Spinoza, 286. 

by Saint Thomas Aquinas, 374-76. 

the ultimate substance, or universe, 291, 

292-94. 
proofs of his existence, 324. 
as conceived by Saint Francis, 343. 
Godfrey of Bouillon, 287. 
Godwin, Earl of Wessex, 18. 
Golden Legend {Legenda Aurea), 87, 164, 259, 

260, 261. 
Good Samaritan window at Chartres, 165, 

177, 180. 
Gothic architecture: 

its beginning and end, 10, 33, 34, 45, 57, 

198, 202, 306. 
its singularity, 89, 139. 
its vaults and buttresses, 108, 109. 
its apses, 114, 118-27. 
{See Mont-Saint-Michel, Chartres, Ro- 
manesque, Transition, etc.) 
Graal, Conte du, 215-18. 
Grace, doctrine of, 323, 376. 
Greece, its influence on France, 139. 
its coins, 196. 
its architecture, 32, 34, 75. 
its share in twelfth-century glass, 133-35. 
its share in scholastic philosophy, 360. 
{See Aristotle, Albertus Magnus, Thomas 
Aquinas, etc.) 
Gregory the Great, Pope and Saint (540- 

604) ; his definition of God, 285. 
Greville, in Normandy, 5. 
Grisaille, windows described by VioUet-le- 
Duc, 158, 159. 
at Chartres, 162, 165, 166, 177. 
Gros Piliers, crypt at Mont-Saint-Michel, ii, 

35- 
Gueldres, battle-cry of, 94. 
Guesclin, battle-cry of, 94. 
Guienne (Acquitaine), Duchy of, 27. {See 

Eleanor of Guienne.) 
GuiUaume. {See William.) 



Guy of Amiens, Latin poem of, 21, 22. 
Gyrth, brother of Harold, killed at Hastings, 
24. 

Haeckel, Professor Ernest, 321, 360. 
Haimon, Abbot of Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, 

103. 
Hainault, province of Flanders, 94, 209. 
Hales, Alexander, Doctor doctorum, 347, 349. 
Halls in mediaeval architecture, 39-40, 118. 
Harold the Saxon, Earl of Wessex, 5, 18; his 

visit to Normandy, 18, 19, 23; at 

Mont-Saint-Michel, 19, 23; his death, 

24. 
Hastings, battle at, 18, 20, 23, 24. 
Haureau, B., Philosophie Scholastique, 320, 

357- 
Hauteville, near Coutances, 4. 
Havise, Countess of Evreux, 209. 
Helena, Empress, 74. 

Heloise, wife of Abelard, 36, 220, 221, 249, 
286, 287, 303. 
established at the Paraclete, 309. 
made Abbess of the Paraclete, 312. 
letter of condolence from Peter the Ven- 
erable, 317. 
Henry of Anjou, King Henry H of England, 
14, 35, 152. 
marries Eleanor of Guienne, 210,211,212. 
Henry HI, King of England (1216-72), 155. 
Henry of France, monk at Clairvaux, 313. 
Henry II, King of France (1547-59), 68. 
Henry III, King of France (1574-89), his 

pilgrimages to Chartres, 256. 
Henry IV, King of France (1589-1610), 256. 
Heraclius, Emperor, 92. 
Hermogenes, or Almogenes, magician, in 
Saint James window at Chartres, 166, 
167. 
Herod, in Chartres windows, 136, 167. 
Hildebert, Abbot of Mont-Saint-Michel, 4, 6, 

7, II. 
Hildebert, Bishop of Le Mans and Archbishop 
of Tours (1055-1133), his definition of 
God, 285, 300, 301. 
Hobbes, Thomas, 379. 
Holy Ghost, 97, 103. 

in Chartres glass, 147, 183. 
mystery of, 304, 305. 
in Adam de Saint- Victor, 327. 
Paraclete, 307, 312. 



392 



INDEX 



Homer, 26. 

Hugo, Archbishop of Rouen, letter on the re- 
building of Chartres, 104. 
Hugolino of Ostia, Cardinal, 342, 343. 
Hume, David, 315. 
Hurepel. {See Philip Hurepel.) 
Huysmans, J. K., The Cathedral, 76, 83-84. 

lie de France, province between the Seine, 

Marne, and Oise, 27, 56-61, 121. 
Iliad, 345. 
Illiers, Raoul de, his window at Chartres, 

157- 
Individualisation, principle of, 297, 360-62. 
Ingres, 138. 

Innocent II, Pope (1130-43), favours Abe- 
lard, 310-12. 
condemns Abclard, 316, 317. 
Innocent VI, Pope (1352-62), 349. 
Isaac et Abraham, in the north porch of 

Chartres Cathedral, 84, 117. 
Isabel de Chartres, 203. 
Isabel de Conches, in Normandy, 209. 
Isabel de France. {See Saint Isabel.) 
Isaiah, in Chartres window, 187. 
Iseult, or Isolde, 50, 219, 220, 226, 287. 
Issoire, church of, 119. 
Ivanhoe, 217. 

Jacobus de Massa, 339, 340. 

Jacques de Voragine (Giacomo di Varaggio), 
Bishop, his Legenda Aurea, 87, 164, 
261. 

James the Major, Saint lago di Compostella, 
window at Chartres, 164-66. 

Jarnac, coup de, 299. 

Jean de Meung, 247, 249. 

Jeanne d'Arc, 210, 246, 249, 341. 

Jeanne de Dammartin, her window at Char- 
tres, 155. 

Jehanne, La belle, conte, 207-209. 

Jeremiah, in Chartres window, 187. 

Jerusalem, Henry of Champagne, King of, 
223. 

Jesuits, Societas Jesu, 286, 306, 349, 376. 

Joachim, Saint, 79, 164. 

John, Saint. {See Saint John, the Evangel- 
ist.) 

John XXII, Pope, 349. 

John, King of England (1199-1216), 150, 
152, 153, 224. 



John I, Duke of Brittany, 189, 

John of Gaunt, in Shakespeare's Richard II, 

256. _ 
John of Salisbury, Bishop of Chartres (1176), 

292, 311, 312, 322. 
Joinville, Jean sire de, his chronicle, 227; his 

education, 199; his religion, 253, 254; 

his account of Queen Blanche, 186, 

201, 202, 207; of court manners, 272. 
Jongleur, joculator, 17-23, 231, 240, 262. 
Jordan, Abbot. {See Mont-Saint-Michel.) 
Jourdain, Charles, La Philosophie de Saint 

Thomas d'Aquin, 361. 
Justinian, Emperor (557), rebuilds the Church 

of Sancta Sofia, 179. 

Kilwardeby, Robert, Archbishop of Canter- 
buiy, 366. 

Labarte, Jules, Histoire des Arts Industriels au 

Moyen Age, 107. 
La belle Jehanne, thirteenth-century novel, 

207-09. 
Lacroix, Paul, Le Moyen Age et la Renaissance, 

107. 
Lady Chapels, 95. 
La Marche, Count of, 189. 
Lancelot, by Christian of Troyes, 215, 219, 

221. 
Laon, cathedral of (Notre Dame), 56, 59, loi, 
116, 321, 334. 
towers and fleches of, 47, 65, 66. 
oxen of, loi. 
apse of, 118, 123, 126. 
western rose-window of, 115, 116. 
Last Judgments, 71, 86, 332. 

in western rose at Chartres, 144, 145. 
Lasteyrie, Ferdinand de, Histoire de la Pein- 

ture sur Verre, 129. 
Latin Quarter of Paris, 174, 220, 275, 288. 
Lazarus. {See Saint-Lazare.) 
Legenda Aurea, by Jacques de Voragine. (See 

Golden Legend.) 
Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 323. 
Le Mans, cathedral of (Saint Julien), 60, 70. 
apse of, 125, 126. 
glass of, 136, 171. 
window of Saint Protais, 260. 
Bishop Hildebert of, 285. 
Leo XIII, on Thomas Aquinas, 349. 
Leonardo da Vinci, 67. 



INDEX 



393 



Lescine, Nicolas, 172, 
Lescot, Pierre, 42, 67. 
Lessay church in Normandy, lO, 51. 
Lincoln, battle of (1217), 153. 
Lisbon earthquake, 370. 
Littre, his dictionary, 9. 
Loches, chateau of, 91. 
Locke, John, 315. 
Lohengrin, 77, loi. 
Loire, architectural school of, 46, 60. 
Louis VI (le Gros), King of France (1081- 
1137), 74, 85, 156, 203 (genealogical 
table), 288, 310, 312. 
his death, 313. 

his queen, Alix de Savoie, 74, 78, 203. 
Louis VII (le Jeune), King of France (1120- 
80), marries Eleanor of Guienne, 152, 
203 (genealogical tables), 220. 
divorced, 211, 212. 

marries Alix de Champagne, 152 (genea- 
logical table), 212. 
his monastic tastes, 313. 
at the Council of Sens to condemn Abe- 
lard, 316. 
Louis VIII (the Lion), King of France (1187 
—1226), 78, 81, 85, 150, 151, 152, 158, 
182. 
marries Blanche of Castile, 224. 
is invited to England by the barons, 153. 
dies in 1226, 225. 
Louis IX (Saint), King of France (1215-70), 
42, 78, 81, 85, 151, 152 (genealogical ta- 
ble), 155, 156, 158, 175, 182, 199, 225, 
253, 254, 255, 273. 
his crusade of 1248, 85, 157, 253, 254. 
in glass at Chartres, 155. 
in awe of his mother, 201. 
his sense of humour, 253. 
his relations with Thomas Aquinas, 347- 

53. 
Louis XI, King of France (1469), creates 
Order of Saint Michael, i, 40. 
builds Loches, 91. 
restores civil order, 255. 
Louis XIV, style of, 9, 42, 144, 221. 
Louis XV, style of, 9. 
Louis d'Orleans, builder of Pierrefonds, 42. 
Louise de Lorraine, queen of Henry III of 

France, 255. 
Lourdes, Notre Dame de, 79, 106, 261, 276, 280. 
Louvre, hall of Pierre Lescot, 42, 



Macbeth, Lady, 209. 

Magdalen. {See Saint Mary pecheresse.) 

Magna Carta, 151, 347. 

Mahaut (Mathilde) de Boulogne, 81, 82, 

Mahaut (Mathilde) de Champagne, 150, 152. 

Maine, Province of. {See Le Mans.) 

Mai ardent, leprosy, 258. 

MSle, Em., LArt religieux en France au XIIP 

Siecle, loi, 129, 168. 
Manicheans, 348. 
Mantes (Seine-et-Oise), death-place of King 

William the Norman, 24, 55. 
its church of Notre Dame, 55-59, 114, 

214. 
Marc, King, in the Roman of Tristan, 219, 

226. 
Margaret of Provence, queen of Louis IX, 

Joinville's story of, 201, 207. 
Marion et Robin, play of, 242-46. 
Marly, Bouchard de, 158. 
Marseilles, 207, 208. 
Masseo of Marignano, 339, 340. 
Mathematics, exercitium nefarium, 72, 289, 

294. 
Matilda of Flanders, Duchess of Normandy 

and Queen of England (tii83), 12, 21, 

203. 
her marriages, 200. 
Matter, its importance in theology, 297, 351, 

359-64- 
Matthew Paris, 156. 
Melchisedec window at Chartres, 186. 
Menestrel de Rheims, 153. 
Menestreus, menestrier, 17, 245, 262. 
Merveille, the. {See Mont-Saint-Michel.) 
Michael, Archangel, patron saint of France, I, 
202. 

his day, October 16, 5, 15. 

his power, i, 6. 

his architecture, 8, 40-42, 351. 

pilgrimages to shrine of, 15-18. 

Order of Chevaliers of, i , 39, 40. 

in the Chanson de Roland, 31. 

at Chartres, 86, 134, 147, 161. 
Michael Angelo, 67, 192, 382. 
Michelet, Jules, history of France, 186. 
Milky Way, 371 ; in window at Chartres, 169. 
Milton, John, 30, 267, 356. 
Minorites. {See Francis of Assisi.) 
Miracles, of the lances, 170. 

of the Virgin. {See Virgin.) 



394 



INDEX 



Moissac, Abbey of (Tarn-et-Garonne), 6, 53, 

70. 
Moliere, 15.^ 
MoHnier, Emile, Histoire Generate des Arts 

Appliques (1896), 107. 
Money-changers and bankers, window at 

Chartres, 181, 182. 
Monreale, mosaics of, 180. 

cathedral of, 4, 118. 
Mont-Saint-Michel in periculo maris, I, 32. 

Abbey church of, i, 5-10, 351. 

triumphal columns, 2, 19, 

tower lost, 10, 50. 

choir, 10. 

crypt, II, 35- 

pilgrimage to, 14-17, 74- 

relation to the Chanson de Roland, 12, 22, 

30, 31. 
refectory of the eleventh century, 11, 12, 

21, 36. 
buildings of the twelfth century : 

aquilon, 33, 34, 35, 70. 

promenoir, 34, 36, 70. 
buildings of the thirteenth century: 

Merveille, 11, 37-45. 91. 109. 

refectory and hall, 38-43, 44. 

charter-house, 42, 43. 

cloisters, 39, 42, 43. 

Belle Chaise entrance, 45. 
ch&telet of fourteenth century, 45. 
Mont-Saint-Michel, Abbots of: 

Hildebert II (1017-23), fourth Abbot, 

4, 6, 7, 10, II. 
Ralph de Beaumont (1048-60), eighth 

Abbot, 12, 23. 
Ranulph du Mont (1060-85), ninth 

Abbot, 12. 
Roger II (1106-23), eleventh Abbot, 33, 

35. 36, 70. 
Robert de Torigny (1154-86), fifteenth 

Abbot, 7, 14, 15, 37, 44. 
Jordan (1191-1212), seventeenth Abbot, 

37, 38. 
Pierre le Roy (1386-1410), twenty- 
ninth Abbot, 45. 

Mont-Saint- Michel, Roman du, by William 
of St. Pair, 12-16, 37. 

Montargis, chateau de, 42. 

Monte Cassino, 4, 347-48. 

Montespan, Mme. de, 9. 

Montfort I'Amaury, 156. 



Montfort, Simon and Amaury, 156. 
Montjoie, battle-cry of France, 25, 94. 
Moret, a drink, 217. 
Morigny, abbey of, 310. 
Mougon, Reynault de. Bishop of Chartres, 154. 
Murano, church at, 118. 
Murillo, painting of Saint Bernard, 93. 
Mystics, French and Italian, loi, 332-46, 
352, 377. 

Naif, natif, 9, 11, 29, 30. 
Naples, Norman conquest of, 4. 
Nebuchadnezzar, in Chartres window, 186. 
Necessitarianism of Abelard, 315, 321, 379. 
Nervures, rib-vaulting, 35, 382. 
New Alliance, the dependence of the new 
dispensation on the old, windows at 
Chartres, etc., 165, 167, 172, 176, 180, 
187. 
Newton, Sir Isaac, 323. 
New York, towers of, 55. 
Nicholas. {See Saint Nicholas.) 
Nicolette. {See Aucassins.) 
Nimbus, 74. 
Nippur, 163. 

Noah, window at Chartres, 180. 
Nominalism, 294, 323, 353. 

results in materialism, 302, 323. 
Normandy, character and influence of, 2-10, 
49, 54, 209, 214. 

conquered by Roland, 27. 

architecture of, 7, 10, 32, 54. 

fleches of, 47-53. 

conquered by Philip Augustus (1203), 37, 

151- 
outbreak of devotion to the Virgin, 50, 

103, 321. 
women of, 3. 
Notre Dame. {See Virgin.) 
Notre-Dame-de-la-Belle-Verriere, window at 

Chartres, 146, 148, 149. 
Noyon, cathedral of (Notre Dame), 37, 56, 
63, 91, 114, 214, 321. 
transepts of, 118. 
Noys, Thought, 357, 358. 

Odo, brother of William the Conqueror, 23, 

24, 28. 
OHphant, 26, 28, 171. 
Oliver and Roland at Roncesvalles, 20, 24-26, 

272, 336. 



INDEX 



395 



Omar Khayyam, 307, 358, 381. 

Orderic, monk of Saint Evroul, his history of 

Normandy, 202, 203, 209, 220. 
Ottin, L., Le Vitrail, 129. 
Ouistreham in Normandy, 10, 53. 

Palermo, 4. 

Pallet in Brittany, 288. 

Pantheism, 286, 299, 301, 323, 344, 355, 376, 

377. 
Paraclete, Holy Ghost, the Consoler, 307. 
Abelard's foundation near Nogent-sur- 

Seine, 307, 318, 
erected into a priory for Heloi'se, 310. 
papal bull of 1136 in its favour, 312. 
Paradise, 144, 145, 232, 233, 279. 
Paris, 36 ; in the time of Abelard, 288. 
churches of, 60. 
schools of, 286, 293. 
cathedral of (Notre Dame), 56, 79, 102, 

106, 114, 289. 
its windows, 56, 57, 58, 114. 
its apse, 119, 120, 126. 
its sculptures, 70, 100, loi. 
Paris, Gaston, his history of mediaeval French 
literature, 205. 
on Christian of Troyes, 214, 215, 220. 
on Thibaut of Champagne, 227. 
on Gaultier de Coincy, 258. 
Parsifal, loi, 215-18. 
Partenopeus of Blois, 207. 
Parvis, small square in front of large church, 

5. 63. 
Pascal, Blaise, 129, 352, 354, 377. 

his Pensees, 323-25, 370. 
Pascal III, antipope, canonises Charle- 
magne, 168. 
Pastrycooks' window at Chartres, 181. 
Peasant, character of the French, 235, 237. 
Perceval, Parsifal, Conte du Graal, by Chris- 
tian of Troyes, 215-18. 
Perche, Comte du, 211 ; his window at Char- 
tres, 150-54. {See Geoffroi.) 
Percherain, 150. 
Percy, in Normandy, 5. 
Peter. {See Saint.) 

Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, 68, 309, 
310, 317; his opinion of Saint Bernard, 
317; of Abelard, 318, 319. 
Petrarch, prayer to the Virgin, 251, 328. 
his religion of women, 213, 219, 226. 



Philip Augustus, King of France (i 180-1223), 
78, 85, 116, 151, 154, 157, 171, 223, 
231. 
Philip Hurepel, son of Philip Augustus, 81-83, 

85, 156, 182, 189, 190. 
Philip the Fair, King of France (1285-13 14), 

88, 250, 253. 
Philip the Hardy, King of France (1270-85), 

63,78. 
Philippe de Commines, 255. 
Phocas, Emperor, 92. 
Pierpont in Normandy, 5. 
Pierre. {See Saint Peter.) 
Pierre de Courtenay, 156. 
Pierre le Venerable. {See Peter.) 
Pierre de Dreux, Mauclerc, his porch at 
Chartres, 85-88, 102, 128. 

his rose-window, 117, 144, 182, 184-94. 

his figure in glass, 189. 

his rebellion, 81, 184, 186, 226, 275. 

prisoner at Damietta, 253. 
Pierre du Pallet. {See Abelard.) 
Pierre de I'Estoile, journal of, 255. 
Pierrefonds, chateau of, 42. 
Pilgrimages, 15-18. 
Pisa, 214. 

Placidas. {See Saint Eustace.) 
Plato, 291, 293. 
Poissy, abbey of, 42. 

abbey church of, 59. 
Poitiers, 63, 211. 

church of Notre Dame la Grande, 53. 

cathedral of (Saint Pierre), 63. 

twelfth-century glass at, 136. 

Bishop of, 320. 

Raymond, Count'of, 211. 
Poitou, 27. 
Ponthieu, County of, 19. 

Count of, 155. 

La Comtesse de, conte, 207, 209. 
Porches and portals, 69-88. 
Porphyry, his Preliminaries, 293, 300. 
Port-Royal, 325. 
Prison-song of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, 222- 

23- 
Prodigal Son, 76, 77, 174, 175. 

windows at Chartres, etc., 165, 173, 174, 

175, 176, 181. 
Provence, 27. 

Provins, in Champagne, 227. 
Pythagoras, 73. 



396 



INDEX 



Queen of Sheba, 77, 83. 
Quixote, Don, 213, 215. 

Rafael Sanzio, 67. 

Ralph de Beaumont, eighth Abbot of Mont- 
Saint-Michel (1048-60), 12, 23. 
Ralph, seigneur de Conches, 209. 
Ranulph du Mont, ninth Abbot of Mont- 
Saint-Michel, (1060-85), 12, 31. 
Raoul de Cambrai, roman, 214. 
Ravenna, 118, 130. 
Raymond of Poitiers, 211. 
Realism, 174, 294, 320. 

results in pantheism, 299, 300, 323. 
Reynault, or Renaud, de Mougon, Bishop of 

Chartres, his window, 154, 168. 
Regnon, Th. de, S. J. Etudes sur la Sainte 

Trinite, 306, 376. 
Remusat, Charles de, his work on Abelard, 

300. 
Renaissance, the, 89. 
Renan, Ernest, 354. 

Averroes et V Averro'isme, 140. 
Renaud, Bishop of Chartres, 154. {See 

Reynault.) 
Rheims, cathedral of (Notre Dame), 49, 79, 
80, 89, 91, 192, 225, 347, 350. 
sculpture at, 83, 100. 
height of vault, no. 
rose- windows, 115. 
twelfth-century glass, 137. 
Rhine, architectural school of, 60. 
Richard, Coeur-de-Lion, King of England 
(1189-99), 150, 152, 203, 218, 222, 
231. 
his poetry, 14, 150, 222, 223. 
his education, 199. 
afhanced to Alix de France, 212. 
his death, 223, 231. 
Richard I, sans-Peur, Duke of Normandy 

(943-96), 4. 
Richard II of Normandy (996-1026), 4, 51, 
Richard de Saint- Victor, 326. 
Robert of Artois, 242. 
Robert Guiscard (1015-85), 4. 
Robert de Beaumont, at Chartres, 158. 
Robert of Torigny, fifteenth Abbot of Mont- 
Saint-Michel (1154-86), 7, 14, 15, 37, 
44. 
Robin et Marion, play of, 242-46. 
Robin Hood, 218, 246. 



Roger of Sicily, twelfth son of Tancred de 

Hauteville (1031-1101), 4. 
Roger II, King of Sicily, (i 101-54), 4. 
Roger II, eleventh Abbot of Mont-Saint- 
Michel (1106-23), 33. 35. 36, 70. 
Roger of Wendover, 153. 
Rohault de Fleury, his Iconographie de la 

Sainte Vierge, 74, 91, 95. 
Roland, prefect of the Breton marches, killed 
at Roncesvalles (778), 5, 17-31. 

Chanson de, 12, 17-31, 34, 233, 267, 
272. 

his relics, 27, 28. 

at Chartres, 12, 168-72. 

ideal hero of Saint Francis, 335, 336. 
Roman, du Mont-Saint- Michel, 14-17. 

de Rou, 18, 19. 

Partenopeus de Blois, 207. 

de la Charette, 215, 221. 

de la Rose, 242, 247-50. 
Romanesque architecture of the eleventh cen- 
tury, 6-13. 
Rome, church of II Gesu, 34; St. Peter's, 67. 

jealousy of, 95, 123. 
Roncesvalles, 5, 20, 24, 30. 
Rose motive in windows, 115. 
Rose-windows, at Mantes, 55, 56, 114, 115. 

at Amiens, 115. 

at Paris, 56, 115. 

at Beauvais, 116. 

at Laon, 115. 

at Etampes, 116. (See Chartres.) 
Rotrou, Comte du Perche, 152. 
Rouen, hall at, 42. 

cathedral of (Notre Dame), 54, 91, 172. 

abbey of Jumieges, 53. 
Rousselot, Xavier, Etudes sur la Philosophic, 

320. 
Runnimede, 151. 
Rutebeuf, satirist, 254, 269. 

Saint Anne (mother of the Virgin), at Char- 
tres, 79, 83, 185-86, 191 ; her daughters, 
164. 

Apollinaris, window at Chartres, 181. 

Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, 163, 184, 
323, 342, 347, 350, 370, 373. 

Bartholomew, massacre of, 255, 

Basil, blood of, 27, 28, 

Benedict, 31. 

Benoit-sur-Loire, abbey church of, 5. 



INDEX 



397 



Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, 12, 34, 

36, 49, 67, 68, 92, 106, 161, 163, 174, 

281, 282, 320-22, 325; hymns to the 

Virgin, 93, 96, 255, 257, 330; the- 

ologist, 129, 320, 351; politician, 

202, 204. {See Abelard, Gilbert de 

la Poree, Bernard.) 
Bonaventure, General of the Franciscan 

Order, 353, 361. 
Christopher, 50. 
Denis, hair of, 27, 28. 

seigneur of Roland, 27. 

abbey church of, 34, 42, 169, 249, 313. 

glass of Abbe Suger, 129, 134-36, 146, 
204. {See Suger.) 

battle-cry of France, 34, 94. 
Dominic. {See Dominic.) 
Etienne, window at Chartres, 171, 177. 

rose, in church at Beauvais, 116. {See 
Abbaye-aux-Hommes, Bourges, and 
Sens.) 
Eustace, window of, at Chartres, 172-73, 

180. 
Ferdinand of Castile and Leon, 155, 182. 

in glass at Chartres, 191 ; his genealogy, 
203. 
Francis of Assisi, 12, 92, 325. 

his sermon to the birds, 44, 338, 339. 

his birth, 334. 

his Knights of the Round Table, 335. 

his hatred of schools and scholars, 338, 
342-44. 

his Fioretti, 164, 338. 

his pantheism, 338-46. 

his Cantico del Sole, 344-45. 

his death, 334, 346. 
Gabriel, archangel, 29, 73, 79, 134, 147. 
Genevieve, hill of, 289. 
George, statue at Chartres, 85, 86, 87. 

window at Chartres, 183. 
Germain at Auxerre, clocher, 65. 
Germain-des-Pres, abbey church of, at 

Paris, 59, 60, 288. 
Gervais, clocher at Falaise, 53; Gervais 

et Protais (martyrs), window to, at Le 

Mans, 260. 
Gildas-de-Rhuys, abbey in Brittany, 174, 

309, 310, 318; elects Abelard as abbot, 

309; treatment of Abelard, 311. 
Gregory the Great, 285. 
Hilary of Poitiers, 183. 



Isabel of France, 83, 168. 

James'the Major (Santiago of Compos- 

tella), 164; his window at Chartres, 

165-67, 170. 
James the Minor, 164.. 
Jerome, window of, at Chartres, 184. 
Joachim, 79, 164. 
John the Evangelist, 86, 164; his window 

at Chartres, 180; in the Rose de Dreux, 

187. 
Joseph, 73, 164, 176. 
Jude, 164, 165. 
Julien-le-Pauvre, church of, in Paris, 60, 

288. 
Lawrence, window at Chartres, 181. 
Lazare, 29; cathedral at Autun, 71. 
Leu d'Esserent (Oise), abbey church of, 

58, 116, 214; fleche of, 64. 
Louis. {See Louis IX.) 
Lubin, window of, at Chartres, 180, 183. 
Lucien, abbey of Beauvais, 310. 
Luke, in Chartres window, 187. 

his prodigal son, 76, 174. 
Mark, church of, at Venice, 6, 118. 

in Chartres window, 187. 
Martin of Tours, windows at Chartres, 

172, 183. 
Martin-des-Champs, church of, in Paris, 

60; its apse, 119. 
Mary. {See Virgin.) 

Mary the Gipsy (pecheresse), her win- 
dow at Chartres, 176, 184. 
Mary Magdalen (pecheresse), her win- 
dow at Chartres, 176, 180. 
Matthew, in Chartres window, 187. 
Maurice, cathedral of Angers, 116, 136. 
Michael. {See Michael.) 
Nicholas, 86; his windows at Chartres, 

180, 183. 
Pair, in Normandy, 14, 15, 17, 18. 
Paul, 108, 187; window at Chartres, 163, 

164, 165. 
Peter, his attitude to the Virgin, 164; 
tooth of, 27, 28 ; statue of, 76 ; window 
at Chartres, 163, 164, 165, 184. 

church of, sur Dives, fleche at, 53, 103, 
321. 

church of, at Rome, 109. 
Piat, chapel of, at Chartres, 160, 171, 

172, 175- 
Pierre {see Saint Peter), 94. 



398 



INDEX 



Saint Protais, window of, at Le Mans, 260. 
Romain, clocher of, at Rouen, 54, 55, 
Sernin, church of, at Toulouse, 6. 
Severin, church of, at Paris, 288. 
Simeon, 73. 

Simon and Saint Jude, 163, 164, 165. 
Sofia, church of, at Constantinople, iii, 

118, 179, 192^ 
Stephen. {See Etienne.) 
Sulpice, church of, at Paris, 34, no, 

313- 
Sylvestre and Melchiades, window of, at 

Chartres, 154, 171, 172, 177. 
Theodore, statue of, at Chartres, 87. 
Thierry, abbey of, 313. 
Thomas, apostle and martyr, his window 

at Chartres, 171, 177. 
Thomas A Becket, martyr, 176; window 
at Chartres, 176, 177; his hair-shirt, 
260. 
Thomas Aquinas, doctor angelicus, 93, 
106, 288; his works, 258; his birth and 
career, 347-48;" at court of Saint 
Louis, 348; his authority in the Church, 
349; his church as architecture, 321, 
322, 349-83- 
Victor, cloister and school of, in Paris, 
292, 322-32, 351 {see Adam de Saint- 
Victor); murder of Prior in 1133, 311. 
Sainte-Chapelle, at Paris, 154, 158, 247. 
San Vitale, church of, at Ravenna, 118. 
Sapphires, in glass, 135. 
Satan. {See Adam.) 
Scheherazade, 207. 

Schools of Romanesque architecture, 60. 
Schools and scholastic teaching, at Paris, 174, 
176, 287-307, 338, 348, 369. 
at Cologne, 347, 348. 
Scott, Walter, 217, 279. 

his translation of the Dies Irce, 331, 332. 
Secqueville in Normandy, fleche of, 53, 65. 
Senlis, cathedral of (Notre Dame), 59, 65, 214. 
Sens, cathedral of (Saint-Etienne), its sculp- 
tures, 70. 
its glass, 173, 174, 180. 
council at, in 1140, condemns Abelard, 
316, 318, 320. 
Shakespeare, 113, 233, 236, 280; Much Ado 
about Nothing, 207 ; Lady Macbeth, 209; 
Henry VI, 256. 
Sheba, Queen of, at Chartres, 83. 



Shoemakers' window at Chartres, 172. 
Sic et Non, work by Abelard, 314. 
Sicily, Norman conquest of, 4. 
temples of, 32. 
churches of, at Palermo, Monreale, 

Cefalu, 179, 180. 
Counts and Dukes of: 
Roger I (1031-1101), 4. 
Roger II ( 1 097-1 154), King of, 4. 
William II (1166-87), 4- 
Socrates, the scholastic individual, 291, 295, 

298, 299, 357, 360. 
Soissons, cathedral of (Saint-Gervais et 
Saint-Protais), 37, 56, 118, 126, 321. 
architects of, 51. 

council of (1121), condemns Abelard, 
306, 316. 
Solomon window at Chartres, 186. 
Sorbonne, school of theology in Paris, founded 

in 1253, 353. ^ 
Spinoza, Benedict, his definition of God, 286, 

321, 323. 351. 360. 
Stratford atte bowe, 3. 
Statuary, a mark of the Virgin's churches, 100. 
Stella Maris, 330. 

Substance, sub-stans, that which stands be- 
hind or under the phenomenon; das 
Ding an sich, 291, 295, 320. 
Suger, Abbot of Saint-Denis (1122-52), 35, 
68, 307. 
rebuilds the Abbey of Saint-Denis, 313. 
his glass, 129, 134-36, 144, 146. 
his political influence, 202, 210, 308, 313. 
Syllogisms, 141, 290. 

rejected by Bacon, 315, 341. 
Synagogue, symbol in art, 102, 175, 187. 

Taillefer, Incisor-ferri, Duke William's jong- 
leur, 20-26, 31. 34- 
Tailors' window at Chartres, 166. 
Tancred of Hauteville, 4. 
Tanners' windows at Chartres and Bourges, 

1 72,, 1 73-74- 
Tempier, Etienne, Bishop of Paris, 366. 

his Merlin. 
Tennyson, Alfred, 241, 338; 205. 
Thaon, church in Normandy, 10, 52. 
Theocritus, 338. 
Theophilus, miracle of, 280. 
Thibaut, Count of Champagne (ti20i), 152, 

203, 223. 



INDEX 



399 



le Grand, Count of Champagne (1201- 
53), 152 (genealogical table), 203 
(genealogical table), 224, 225, 231, 246. 

the friend of Queen Blanche, 189, 190, 
224, 225, 226. 

affianced to Yolande of Brittany, 189, 

253- 
his poems, 227-29. 

Count of Chartres (tii97). 152 (gene- 
alogical table), 203 (genealogical table), 
211, 212. 
VI of Chartres (ti2i8), le Jeune, ou le 
Lepreux, 150, 151, 152, I54. 181, 
203 (genealogical table). 
Thomas Aquinas, doctor angelicus, saint, 57, 
93- 106, 315- 
his birth, 164, 288, 338, 347- 
his death, 366. 

his training and character, 348. 
at court of Louis IX, 348. 
his works, 258, 348-49- 
his church as architecture, 350. 
its Norman foundation, 351. 
his demonstration of God, 352. 
his definition of the Trinity, 355. 
his doctrine of Creation, 356-59- 
his doctrine of Individualisation, 360-62. 
his doctrine of free-will and grace, 369, 
Thomas of Le Perche, Count, 151-52 (gene- 
alogical table); killed at Lincoln, 150- 
54; his window at Chartres, 150, 154. 
Thomas Cantimpratensis, canon of the Abbey 

of Cantimpre, 330. 
Time, in the Roman de la Rose, 248-49. 

in theology, 358. 
Tombeor de Notre Dame, 281-84. 
Torcello, 118, 194. 
Torigny, Abbot Robert of, 7. 
Tortosa in Syria, miracle at, 254. 
Toulouse, 223, 225; church of Saint-Sernin, 

6, 119. 
Tours, cathedral of (Saint-Gatian) : 
glass in, 166, 193. 

men of, give window at Chartres, 181. 
Towers, clochers and fleches: 
in Normandy, 6, 10, 48-52. 
at Bayeux, 7, 51, 53- 
at Boscherville, 53. 
at Caen, 49, 52, 53- 
at Cerisy-la-Foret, 10, 51. 
at Coutances, 47-53- 



at Falaise, 53, 54- 

at Jumieges, 53. 

at Lessay, 51. 

at Rouen, 54. 

at Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, 53, 321. 

at Secqueville, 53. 

at Thaon, 52. 

at Vacuelles, 54. 

in the Isle de France, 47, 48, 54. 58- 

at Saint-Leu-d'Esserent, 58, 59. 

at Senlis, 59. 

at Saint-Denis, 58, 313. 

in theChartrain. {See Chartres.) 

at Fenioux, 48. 
in New York, 55. 
Trajan, 172. 
Transition, the French, 33, 34, 35. 57. 94. 

321. 
Tree of Jesse window at Chartres, 129-34. 
Trent, Council of, 349. 
Tresca, thirteenth-century dance, 242-45. 
Triangle, mystic, 102, 296-99, 301-02, 355, 

356. 
Trianon, 144. 
Triclinium, 97, 330. 
Trinity, the, at Mont-Saint-Michel, 8. 
in the Chanson de Roland, 29. 
at Chartres, 79, 102. 
overshadowed by the Virgin, 91, 99, 102, 

145- 
mystery of, 179. 183. 295-96, 302. 
defined by Thomas Aquinas, 355. 
immutable in law, 252, 262, 263. 
dependent on the Virgin, 254, 262, 265, 

273- 
in essence Unity, 263. 
its philosophical value, 304-305. 320. 
in Egypt, 179. 304- 
in the verses of Adam de Saint- Victor, 

326. 
in the Church fabric, 350, 354- 
Tristan and Isolde, 50, 77. 214, 219, 220, 

221. 
Trouveres, poetry of, 140. 
Troyes, 214, 221, 227, 307, 308. 
Truie qui file, 128. 
Trumeau, 81, 86, 88. 

Turpin, Archbishop of Rheims, 24, 170; his 
death at Roncesvalles, 26; his Chron- 
icle, 168. 
Tutbury Abbey, 103- 



400 



INDEX 



UgoHno, Cardinal (Pope Gregory IX), 342, 

343- 
UgoUno, Franciscan monk, 339. 

Unity (see Trinity), 301-302, 323. 351-69- 
Universals, doctrine of, 291-300, 364. 

Valois kings of France (1328-1589), 84. 
Vaucelles, central tower of church at Caen, 

52, 54; suburb of Caen, 200. 
Vaulting, 109, 120-26, 356, 367. 
Vendome, fleche of, 52, 64. 

twelfth-century glass at, 137. 
chapel of, at Chartres, 148, 181. 
Venice, San Marco, 6. 
Verlaine, 14. 

Versailles, Salle des Glaces, 42 ; queen's apart- 
ments, 91. 
Vexin, French county, 5. 
Vezelay, abbey of, 6, 42, 70; apse of, 120, 

214. 
Villard de Honnecourt, thirteenth-century 
architect, his notes on Chartres and 
Laon, 66, 116, 141, 351. 
Villon, his Ballade des Dames, 249. 
Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionary of French Archi- 
tecture, 38, 42,43, 117; of Mobilier, 
107. 
remarks on Coutances, 47, 49, 50. 
on Thaon, 52, 53. 
on Rouen, 53, 367. 
on Mantes, 56, 57. 
on Vendome, 64. 

on the old tower at Chartres, 64, 65, 66. 
at Clermont, 67, 68. 
on the Chartres porches, 77, 80. 
on the Chartres structure, 11 1, 
on the Chartres fenestration, 114, 116. 
on apses, 11 8-127. 

on glass, 129-33, 165; on grisaille, 159, 
183. 
Virgin, of Chartres: 

^of the crypt, i, 255. 

of the Belle Verriere, 148. 

of the Pillar, 146. 

of France and of Dreux, 185-90. 

always the Virgin of Majesty, 72-79, 

84-88, 107-109, 134, 148. 
coronation of, 78. 
court of, 83, 182-97. 
authority of, 260, 262, 265, 271, 273, 275, 
276, 367. 



character and tastes of, 12, 90, 96, 97, 
103, 107, 176, 182, 183, 205, 213, 251- 

73- 
illogical by essence, 261-77, 34i- 
Virgin, Miracles of, 69, 103, 181, 251-84. 
at Tortosa, 254. 
at Chartres, 258. 
for Saint Thomas of Canterbury, 259, 

260. 
at Le Mans, 260. 
for her Son, 262. 

against Church discipline, 263, 264. 
for chevaliers, 266-71. 
against the decisions of the Trinity, 265, 

272-73. 
for her Tombeor, 281-84. 
for Adam de Saint-Victor, 330. 
Virgin, of Majesty: at Byzantium, 91. 

in the western portal of Chartres, 72-79, 

145- 
on the porches at Chartres, 81-85, 93. 
in twelfth-century glass, 134, 145-46. 
in thirteenth-century glass, 145, 147, 180. 
in fifteenth-century glass, 148, 181. 
Virgin, of Theology, 73, 83, 102, 262. 

as understood by Saint Bernard, 92, 96, 

202. 
by Abelard, 257. 
by Albertus Magnus, 93. 
by Adam de Saint-Victor, 96, 330-33. 
the religion of love, 325. 
Virgin, of twelfth- and thirteenth-century 
society: 
battle-cries of, 34, 94. 
in the game of chess, 204-205. 
palaces of, 91 ; their money-cost, 94-99. 
poetry of. (See Abelard, Saint Bernard, 
Gaultier de Coincy, Adam de Saint- 
Victor, Rutebeuf.) 
symbol of, the rose, 112, 115. 
her family connection, 164, 165. 
her presence assumed, 105-12, 117, 121, 
145, 182-97, 251-54. 
Voltaire, 14, 107, 322, 370. 

Wace, his Roman de Ron, 17, 18, 19, 214. 
his account of the battle of Hastings, 20, 
22. 
Wagner, Richard, his Tristan, 219. 
Water-carriers' window at Chartres, 180-81. 
Westlake's History of Design, 129. 



INDEX 



401 



William, the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, 
2, 5, 8, 12, 15, 18, 19, 31, 200, 203, 285; 
his conquest of England, 2, 4, 8, 20, 23 ; 
his death at Mantes, 55. 

William Rufus, King of England, Duke of 
Normandy, 202. 

William II, King of Sicily (1166-89), 4- 

William of Champeaux, Bishop of Chalons, 
286, 290-303, 326, 352, 360, 361. 

William of Loris, his Roman de la Rose, 231, 
233, 247-50, 253. 

William of Malmesbury, 21. 

William of Saint- Pair, his Roman du Mont- 
Saint-Michel, 14-18, 37, 43, 214. 



William of Saint-Thierry, Abbot, his charges 

against Abelard, 313. 
Windows, French books on, 129; glass at 
Chartres, 128. 
of twelfth century, 129-43. 
of thirteenth century, 142-78. 
of fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 193. 
Women of the twelfth and thirteenth cen- 
turies, 76, 81-83, 100, 198-229. 
Wordsworth, 2, 89, 90. 

Yolande of Brittany, 155, 189, 253. 



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